United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was used to this mute reception, and had learned that it had no personal motive, but was the result of an extremely simplified social code. Mr. and Mrs. Spragg seldom spoke to each other when they met, and words of greeting seemed almost unknown to their domestic vocabulary. To-night, however, he felt another meaning in her silence, and perceived that she intended him to feel it.
She had spoken to him, and he had remembered her and called her "Granny"; and the next day she had received a note from Mrs. Fairford saying that Ralph would be glad to send Paul to see her. Mrs. Spragg enlarged on the delights of the visit and the growing beauty and cleverness of her grandson.
It occurred to him to consult his grandfather; and if he renounced the idea for the obvious reason that Mr. Dagonet's ignorance of business was as fathomless as his own, this was not his sole motive. Finally it occurred to him to put the case hypothetically to Mr. Spragg.
His mother refused to give him up, refused to await the arrival of her lawyer's letter, and reiterated, in more peremptory language, her demand that the child should be sent immediately to Paris in Mrs. Heeny's care. Mr. Spragg, in face of Ralph's entreaties, remained pacific but remote. It was evident that, though he had no wish to quarrel with Ralph, he saw no reason for resisting Undine.
Her parents' diminished means and her own uncertain future made her regard the care of Paul as an additional burden, and she quieted her scruples by thinking of him as "better off" with Ralph's family, and of herself as rather touchingly disinterested in putting his welfare before her own. Poor Mrs. Spragg was pining for him, but Undine rejected her artless suggestion that Mrs.
Spragg had done her own washing in her youth, but since her rising fortunes had made this occupation unsuitable she had sunk into the relative inertia which the ladies of Apex City regarded as one of the prerogatives of affluence.
Then uncertainty overcame her, and she re-wrote her note and copied Mrs. Fairford's formula: "Yours sincerely, Leota B. Spragg." But this struck her as an odd juxtaposition of formality and freedom, and she made a third attempt: "Yours with love, Leota B. Spragg."
"Them's old stones, Undine they've got a different look," she said, examining the ring while she rubbed her cushioned palm over the girl's brilliant finger-tips. "And the setting's quaint I wouldn't wonder but what it was one of old Gran'ma Dagonet's." Mrs. Spragg, hovering near in fond beatitude, looked up quickly. "Why, don't you s'pose he BOUGHT it for her, Mrs. Heeny?
Harmon B. Driscoll, would understand and esteem Mrs. Spragg. But how long would their virgin innocence last? Popple's vulgar hands were on it already Popple's and the unspeakable Van Degen's! Once they and theirs had begun the process of initiating Undine, there was no knowing or rather there was too easy knowing how it would end!
Both these have little in them indeed, but yet both did stick close against him; and he is the weakest man in the world to make his defence, and so is like to have much fault laid on him therefrom. Spragg was in with them all the afternoon, and hath much fault laid on him for a man that minded his pleasure, and little else of his whole charge. I walked in the lobby, and there do hear from Mr.
Word Of The Day