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Updated: May 23, 2025
Harry Dressel, seated in the June freshness of her Oak Street drawing-room, and harmonizing by her high lights and hard edges with the white-and-gold angularities of the best furniture, cast a rebuking eye on her friend Miss Brent, who stood arranging in a glass bowl the handful of roses she had just brought in from the garden. Mrs.
Dressel; the difficulty was that she never quite knew when Justine's retorts were loaded, or when her own susceptibilities were the target aimed at; and between her desire to appear to take the joke, and the fear of being ridiculed without knowing it, her pretty face often presented an interesting study in perplexity. As usual, she now took refuge in bringing the talk back to a personal issue.
The Roraima Mountain begins to be regarded as quite easy travel for the orchid-hunter nowadays. If I mention that the canoe-work on this route demands thirty-two portages, thirty-two loadings and unloadings of the cargo, the reader can judge what a "difficult road" must be. Ascending the Roraima, Mr. Dressel, collecting for Mr. Sander, lost his herbarium in the Essequibo River.
"Oh, Effie dear, don't you remember the fable of the wings under the skin, that sprout when one meets a pair of kindred shoulders?" And, as Mrs. Dressel bent on her a brow of unenlightenment "Well, it doesn't matter: I only meant that I've always been afraid good clothes might keep my wings from sprouting!"
A tap on the door announced Mrs. Dressel, garbed for conquest, and bestowing on her brilliant person the last anxious touches of the artist reluctant to part from a masterpiece. "My dear, how well you look! I knew that dress would be becoming!" she exclaimed, generously transferring her self-approval to Justine; and adding, as the latter moved toward her: "I wish Westy Gaines could see you now!"
Frank N. Doubleday played on first base; William D. Moffat, later of Moffat, Yard & Company, and now editor of The Mentor, was behind the bat; Bok pitched; Ernest Dressel North, the present authority on rare editions of books, was in the field, as were also Ray Safford, now a director in the Scribner corporation, and Owen W. Brewer, at present a prominent figure in Chicago's book world.
I'll see you before I go." He nodded affectionately and passed on, his hands full of papers, into the Oriental smoking-room, now dedicated to the unexpected uses of an office and study. Mrs. Amherst, as she turned away, found the parlour-maid in the act of opening the front door to the highly-tinted and well-dressed figure of Mrs. Harry Dressel.
"I'm afraid I must be off, mother " he began, halting in the doorway with the instinctive masculine recoil from the afternoon caller. "Oh, Mr. Amherst, how d'you do? I suppose you're very busy about tomorrow? I just flew in to find out if Justine was really coming," Mrs. Dressel explained, a little fluttered by the effort of recalling what she had been saying when he entered.
If the company was dull, it was at least decorative; and poverty, misery and dirt were shut out by the placid unconsciousness of the guests as securely as by the leafy barriers of the garden. "AH, Mrs. Dressel, we were on the lookout for you waiting for the curtain to rise. Your friend Miss Brent? Juliana, Mrs. Dressel's friend Miss Brent "
She turned back to the glass, giving herself a last light touch such as she had bestowed on the roses. "And that reminds me," she continued "how about Mr. Amherst's wings?" "John Amherst?" Mrs. Dressel brightened into immediate attention. "Why, do you know him?"
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