United States or Tonga ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Draper hesitated, with another self-confessing smile. "Father thinks I talk too much that I keep going in and out of things. He doesn't believe in analyzing: he thinks it's destructive. But it hasn't destroyed my ideals." He looked wistfully up and down the clanging street. "And that's the main thing, isn't it? I mean, that one should have an Ideal." He turned back almost gaily to Millner.
The new man that seemed to have so suddenly sprung to life within him, the Wilbur who was the mate of the "Bertha Millner," the Wilbur who belonged to Moran, believed that he could see nothing to be desired in city life.
And your exegetical scruples seem to him to strike at the very root of his convictions." Draper pulled himself to his feet and shuffled across the room. Then he turned about, and stood before his friend. "Is it that or is it this?" he said; and with the word he drew a letter from his pocket and proffered it silently to Millner.
During this time the "Bertha Millner" was keeled over to nearly twenty degrees by the weight of the dead monster. However, neither Wilbur nor Moran made protest. The Chinamen would do as they pleased; that was said and signed. And they did not release the schooner until the whale had been emptied of oil and blubber, spermaceti and bone.
No," Millner jested in his frank free voice. "The fact is, I was just standing here lost in the contemplation of my luck" and as his companion's pale blue eyes seemed to shape a question, "my extraordinary luck," he explained, "in having been engaged as your father's secretary." "Oh," the other rejoined, with a faint colour in his sallow cheek.
In the course of the next few moments, while the little vessel was being got under way, and while the Ridgeways' "Petrel" gleamed off into the blue distance, Wilbur made certain observations. The name of the boat on which he found himself was the "Bertha Millner."
But the face took on, as the youth smiled his surprise at their second meeting, a look of almost plaintive good-will: the kind of look that Millner scorned and yet could never quite resist. "Mr. Millner? Are you er waiting?" the lad asked, with an intention of serviceableness that was like a finer echo of his father's resounding cordiality. "For my motor?
You kin have the Bertha Millner I've a year's charter o' her from Wilbur and I'll only ask you fifteen per cent. of the net profits net, mind you." "I ain't buyin' no dead horse, Cap'n," returned Hardenberg, "but I'll say this: we pay no fifteen per cent." "Banks and the Ruggles were daft to try it and give me twenty-five." "An' where would Banks land the scheme? I know him.
"I don't understand this new notion of Draper's," he said abruptly. "Where's he got it from? No one ever learned irreligion in my household." He turned his eyes on Millner, who had the sense of being scrutinized through a ground-glass window which left him visible while it concealed his observer. The young man let his pen describe two or three vague patterns on the blank sheet before him.
Millner, keenly aware that an aromatic savarin au rhum was describing an arc behind his head previous to being rushed back to the pantry under young Draper's indifferent eye, stiffened himself against this last assault of the enemy, and read out firmly: " What relation do you consider that a man's business conduct should bear to his religious and domestic life?" Mr. Spence mused a moment.
Word Of The Day