The Twenty-Fourth of June: Midsummer's DayRichmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
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The Twenty-Fourth of June: Midsummer's Day
Richmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
Children of the rich -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
He followed an impulse. Rising, the sheet of yellowed paper in his hand,
he walked over to the typewriter. Without apology he laid the sheet upon
the pile of typed ones at her side.
"See what I've found in an old volume of state speeches."
Roberta's busy hand stopped. Her eyes scanned the yellow page upon which
the stiff, fine handwriting, clearly that of a man, stood out legibly as
print. Business woman she might be, but she could not so far abstract
herself as not to be touched by the hint of romance involved in finding
such words in such a place.
"How strange!" she owned. "And they've been there a long time, by the
look of the paper and ink. I never saw the handwriting before. Perhaps
Uncle Calvin lent the book to somebody long ago and the 'somebody' left
this in it."
"Shall I put it back, or show it to Judge Gray?"
He remained beside her though she had handed back the paper.
"Put it back, don't you think? If you wrote out such words and left them
in a book, you would want them to stay there, not to be looked at
curiously by other eyes fifty years after."
"That's somebody's heart there on that sheet of old paper," said he.
Apparently he was looking at the paper; in reality he was stealing a
glance past it at her down-bent face.
"Not necessarily. Somebody may merely have been attracted by the music
of the lines. Put it back, Mr. Secretary, and concern yourself with
Judge Cahill. It's to be hoped that you won't find any more distracting
verse between his pages."
"Why not? Oughtn't one to get all the poetry one can out of life?"
"Not in business hours."
He laughed in spite of himself at the failure of his effort to make her
self-conscious by any reading of such lines in his presence. Clearly she
meant to allow no personal relation to arise between them while they
were thrown together by Judge Gray's need of them. She fell to typing
again with even more energy than before, if that were possible, while
he--it must be confessed that before he laid the verses away between the
pages for another fifty years' sleep he had made note of their identity,
that he might look them up again in a seldom opened copy of the English
poet on his shelves at home. They belonged to him now!
In half an hour more Roberta's machine stopped clicking. Swiftly she
covered it, set it away in the book-cupboard, and put her table in
order. She laid the typewritten sheets together upon Judge Gray's desk
in a straight-edged pile, a paperweight on top. In her simple dress of
dark blue, trim as any office woman's attire, she might have been a
hired stenographer--of a very high class--putting her affairs in order
for the day.
Richard waited till she approached his desk, which she had to pass on
her way out. Then he rose to his feet.
"Allow me to congratulate you," said he, "on having accomplished a long
task in the minimum length of time possible. I am lost in wonder that a
hand which can play the 'cello with such art can play the typewriter
with such skill."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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