Love stories; Mate selection -- Fiction; Mills and mill-work -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction
“Meaning--” she stood still and put one thin hand with its pointed and
glistening nails on his arm, and her bright eyes under their plucked
brows were steady and serious. “Say, listen, Peter Pan, she’s there a
billion, Glen Darrow. What more do you want? Beauty--gobs of it; brains
to burn; good blood; pep ’n ginger, _I’ll_ say! And a straight shooter
if ever there was one in a crooked world!”
He made a start toward following the dusky worshipers but she held him.
“_Listen_, Peter. What’s the use of fooling round till you’re grabbed
off by some bird-headed débutante? They’ll get you yet. Nearly did,
myself, remember?”
He nodded cordially. “Rather a narrow squeak, wasn’t it?”
“You heard my panting breath close, close behind you! But if I can’t
have you myself----”
“You can’t, darling,” he was gently adamant about it.
“Then there’s only one Jane in all the world I’ll root for! Peter, on
the low down, we don’t amount to a terrible lot, you and I and the rest
of our breed. And adding two of us together makes it twice as nothing.
But if we can close in on something like that, either of us, both of
us, though I’ve never yet met a he--one--well, old thing, think it
over!”
He steered her into a rear pew. “Yours of the 18th ult. received
and contents noted and in reply would say, shall take matter under
immediate consideration and keep you advised on same,” he said briskly,
just as the Reverend Romeo began to boom the announcements for the week.
Bellboys from the Bella Vista, smart housemaids in exuberant sport
clothes, comfortable laundresses and cooks, grave men and women
with yellow skins and tragic eyes, toothless old crones who swayed
ceaselessly to and fro and kept up a constant wailing, clean and
shining children with round and solemn eyes. It was singularly
peaceful in the small brown house of the Lord ... it was a good place
to think, and to feel things out.... The fervor of the rich, teary
voices....
The Reverend Romeo prayed violently on a text of his own. “Yo’ mus’ go
by de junction ob de church!” Tirelessly he pursued his simile home to
its lair. On the journey through life whose terminals were Heaven and
Hell they must go by the junction of the church, and they must keep
their tickets--applied religion--in their hands. “Keep yo’ ticket in
yo’ han’!” he thundered. “Ain’ I seen yo’ on de earf’ly train, when de
conductor come atter yo’ ticket, an’ yo’ hunt in dis pocket _an’_ in
dat pocket, an’ fumble an’ fuss and look in yo’ hat, an’ break out in
col’ sweat? Das’ des’ de way wif yo’ religion. Yo’ ’low yo’ got hit,
kaze yo’ sho had hit once, but tain’ whar yo’ kin fine hit easy!” He
reinforced himself with a swelling breath. “Yo’ mus’ keep yo’ ticket in
yo’ han’!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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