United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Andy M'Gee felt a great load lifted off his mind. He became more and
more interested in Miss Agnes Carroll, and he began to think up little
speeches to make to her, which were intended to show how great his
respect for her was, and what an agreeable young person he might be if
you only grew to know him. But she never grew to know him. She always
answered him very quietly and very kindly, but never with any show of
friendliness or with any approach to it, and he felt that he would
never know her any better than he did on the first night she spoke to
him. But three or four times he found her watching him, and he took
heart at this and from something he believed he saw in her manner and
in the very reticence she showed. He counted up how much of his pay he
had saved, and concluded that with it and with what he received
monthly he could very well afford to marry. When he decided on this
he became more devoted to her, and even the girls stopped laughing
about it now. They saw it was growing very serious indeed.
One afternoon there was a great fire, and he and three others fell
from the roof and were burned a bit, and the boy ambulance surgeon
lost his head and said they were seriously injured, which fact got
into the afternoon papers, and when Andy turned up as usual at the
Opera House there was great surprise and much rejoicing. And the next
day one of the wounded firemen who had had to remain in the hospital
overnight told Andy that a most beautiful lady had come there and
asked to see him and had then said: "This is not the man; the papers
said Mr. M'Gee was hurt." She had refused to tell her name, but had
gone away greatly relieved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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