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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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"We’ll have to take a coach to-night," answered Carrie, absently. - -In the lobby of the Imperial, Mr. Charles Drouet was just arriving, shaking the snow from a very handsome ulster. Bad weather had driven him home early and stirred his desire for those pleasures which shut out the snow and gloom of life. A good dinner, the company of a young woman, and an evening at the theatre were the chief things for him. "Why, hello, Harry!" he said, addressing a lounger in one of the comfortable lobby chairs. "How are you?" "Oh, about six and six," said the other. "Rotten weather, isn’t it?" "Well, I should say," said the other. "I’ve been just sitting here thinking where I’d go to-night." "Come along with me," said Drouet. "I can introduce you to something dead swell." "Who is it?" said the other. "Oh, a couple of girls over here in Fortieth Street. We could have a dandy time. I was just looking for you." "Supposing we get ‘em and take ‘em out to dinner?" "Sure," said Drouet. "Wait’ll I go upstairs and change my clothes." "Well, I’ll be in the barber shop," said the other. "I want to get a shave." "All right," said Drouet, creaking off in his good shoes toward the elevator. The old butterfly was as light on the wing as ever. On an incoming vestibuled Pullman, speeding at forty miles an hour through the snow of the evening, were three others, all related. "First call for dinner in the dining-car," a Pullman servitor was announcing, as he hastened through the aisle in snow-white apron and jacket. "I don’t believe I want to play any more," said the youngest, a black-haired beauty, turned supercilious by fortune, as she pushed a euchre hand away from her. "Shall we go into dinner?" inquired her husband, who was all that fine raiment can make. "Oh, not yet," she answered. "I don’t want to play any more, though." "Jessica," said her mother, who was also a study in what good clothing can do for age, "push that pin down in your tie-it’s coming up." Jessica obeyed, incidentally touching at her lovely hair and looking at a little jewel-faced watch. Her husband studied her, for beauty, even cold, is fascinating from one point of view. "Well, we won’t have much more of this weather," he said. "It only takes two weeks to get to Rome." Mrs. Hurstwood nestled comfortably in her corner and smiled. It was so nice to be the mother-in-law of a rich young man-one whose financial state had borne her personal inspection. "Do you suppose the boat will sail promptly?" asked Jessica, "if it keeps up like this?" "Oh, yes," answered her husband. "This won’t make any difference." Passing down the aisle came a very fair-haired banker’s son, also of Chicago, who had long eyed this supercilious beauty. Even now he did not hesitate to glance at her, and she was conscious of it. With a specially conjured show of indifference, she turned her pretty face wholly away. It was not wifely modesty at all. By so much was her pride satisfied. --At this moment Hurstwood stood before a dirty four-story building in a side street quite near the Bowery, whose one-time coat of buff had been changed by soot and rain. He mingled with a crowd of men-a crowd which had been, and was still, gathering by degrees. |
