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Her irreparably withered neck was clasped by an Indian necklace, showy as a piece of stage jewelry. Light-minded smiles wreathed her heavy face. Where her sleeves stopped there began the soft and serried wrinkles of those long, long buttonless gloves which Sarah Bernhardt had brought into fashion. It was not difficult to see in what illusion Antonia chose to live to-night.
He slung imported A1 fancy groceries about as though they were only the stuff he delivered at boarding-houses; and when he picked up his whip, your mind instantly recalled Mr. Tackett and his air with the buttonless foils. Tradesmen delivered their goods at a side gate at the rear of the house. The grocer's wagon came about ten in the morning.
Brass and pearl button making used to be important industries, and tons of such wares used to be made in Birmingham in the course of a month. Comparatively few are made now. Yet we are not exactly "buttonless black-guards," as Cobbett at least, I think it was Cobbett once disrespectfully called the Quakers, and buttons of various kinds other than pearl and brass are turned out in barrow loads.
And I had smelled before that cold, dank, furnished draught of air that hurried by her to escape immurement in the furnished house. She was stout, and her face and lands were as white as though she had been drowned in a barrel of vinegar. One hand held together at her throat a buttonless flannel dressing sacque whose lines had been cut by no tape or butterick known to mortal woman.
She looked suspicious, clawed her brains for an excuse to refuse, but, as there wasn't a buttonless glove, or a holey stocking among the party, she reluctantly gave me leave. I darted away, plunged into the forest, and did not stop walking until I had got well out of sight of the hotel. Then I sat down on a mossy log under a great tree, and looked about for Jack. A man was coming.
Quite before I knew it, I was myself again: a steady, self-reliant person who could make the best of a situation, who could take his medicine like a man. Luckily, the medicine was not so bitter as it might have been if I had made a vulgar, impassioned display of my emotions. Thank heaven, I had that to be thankful for. She was speaking of the buttonless lawyer, Mr. Bangs.
For the rest, she toiled with indifferent success at household tasks, and was grateful for having a husband so absorbed in distant speculations that he was insensible of the near discomfort of a badly-cooked dinner or a buttonless shirt. The gardens of the houses opened on a lane which was a sort of rubbish-shoot for the houses that gave upon it.
The result was that he had transformed himself from a graceful, picturesque frontiersman into something much less pleasing to the sight. The tight white collar awkwardly constricted his muscular, mahogany-colored neck. The buttonless shirt bulged in stiff waves beneath his unbuttoned vest. The suit of "ready-made" effectually concealed the fine lines of his straight, athletic figure.
"Original? Me life's work, lady." And he awkwardly essayed to button a buttonless coat, coughed, waved his half-consumed cigarette toward the skies, and began: "Folks say we got no morals that they all fell in the soup; And no conscience so the would-be goodies say; And I guess our good intentions did jest up and flew the coop, While we stood around and watched 'em fade away.
The wide sleeves ended a little below the elbow, and she carried in compensation a pair of long suède gloves, a compromise which only occasionally discovered itself buttonless, and a most expensive umbrella, the tribute of a gentleman in that line of business in Cape Town, whose standing advertisement is now her note of appreciation.
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