United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
So the revelry went forward, while Thyrsis marvelled, and tried to hide his pain. There could be no question of any enjoyment for him when he knew that the cost of this affair would have paid all his expenses for a winter! Doubtless what Barry Creston spent for his cigars would have saved Thyrsis and his family from misery all their lives; and he wondered if the man would have cared had he known.
She had always thought of love as something confused and furtive, and he made it as bright and open as the summer air. On the morrow of the day when she had shown him the way to the deserted house he had packed up and left Creston River for Boston; but at the first station he had jumped on the train with a hand-bag and scrambled up into the hills.
The next morning when she arose in the cold dawn and opened her shutters she saw a freckled boy standing on the other side of the road and looking up at her. He was a boy from a farm three or four miles down the Creston road, and she wondered what he was doing there at that hour, and why he looked so hard at her window. When he saw her he crossed over and leaned against the gate unconcernedly.
There was service that evening, and we all went to church. Mother let Sel take the empty seat in the carryall beside her. It was very dark when we started to come home. But Creston was a safe old Orthodox town, the roads were filled with returning church-goers like ourselves, and mother drove like a man. A darker night I think I have never seen. Literally, we could not see a hand before our eyes.
From the passage at the back she dragged forth a bicycle, and guided it to the edge of the street. She looked about to see if any of the girls were approaching; but they had drifted away together toward the Town Hall, and she sprang into the saddle and turned toward the Creston road.
Barry Creston, the giver of this party, was one of the sons of "Dan" Creston, the mine-owner and "railroad-king", who a short while before had been elected senator from a Western state under circumstances of great scandal. "The old man's a hard character, I guess," said Miss Lewis; "but you must not believe all you read in the papers about Barry."
The supper-party broke up about two o'clock, and Miss Raymond, the lady of the flamingo hat, was the only one who showed any effects from all the wine that had been consumed. Thyrsis, to his great surprise discovered that his host had taken a fancy to him, and had asked Miss Lewis to bring him out to luncheon at the Creston place in the country.
"For the present the only thing we can do is to go back to Creston and see if we can't pick up some new clues." The boys, with Colonel Snow, slowly made their way back to the town, carrying with them the body of the cat, the skin of which Rand proposed to have tanned for a trophy for the club room. As they entered the town they were met by Officer Dugan, who put his hand on Rand's shoulder.
Harney asked; but as she turned her happy eyes on him he guessed the answer and said: "We'll take a look round, shall we?" The street swarmed with their fellow-travellers, with other excursionists arriving from other directions, with Nettleton's own population, and with the mill-hands trooping in from the factories on the Creston.
Given an opportunity for revenge, she believed that Jane would scorn to seize it. "Have you invited your freshman yet?" she asked with sudden irrelevancy. "No, I haven't had time to see any one of them yet," Jane answered. "I asked Miss Lorimer, a cute little girl from Creston Hall, this morning after chapel, but she said she'd already been invited," informed Judith.
Word Of The Day