Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
When she had gone he began to talk to Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fuse oil distributed on the sly. "I'll bet I could go out and find half a dozen rum shops within a mile of here!" he declared. Janet did not doubt it. Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he wanted, had amused and distracted her.
She would have to tell them she was Ditmar's stenographer; they would find it out. And now she was filled with doubts about Rolfe. Had he really thought she could be of use to them! Around the Common, in front of the City Hall men went about their affairs alertly, or stopped one another to talk about the strike.
To submit was not only to lose her liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to lose Ditmar's love.... No experience, however, is emotionally continuous, nor was their intimacy by any means wholly on this plane of conflict.
When old Stephen had been called to his fathers, Ditmar's allegiance was automatically, as it were, transferred to the two sons, George and Worthington, already members of the board of directors. Sometimes Ditmar called on them at their homes, which stood overlooking the waters of the Charles River Basin.
What were they thinking of her? Her face was hot as she passed them and entered the hall, where more people were gathered. But Ditmar's complacency, his ease and self-confidence, his manner of owning the place, as it were, somewhat reassured her. He went up to the desk, behind which, stood a burly, red-complexioned man who greeted him effusively, yet with the air of respect accorded the powerful.
It was Ditmar's boast that if nobody else could get a room in a crowded New York hotel, he could always obtain one. And she was fain to concede she who had never known privilege a certain intoxicating quality to this eminence. If you could get the power, and refused to take it, the more fool you!
But Ditmar's anger, instead of cooling, increased: it all seemed directed against the unfortunate superintendent. "Would you believe that a man who's been in this mill twenty-five years could be such a fool?" he demanded. "The I. W. W.! Why not the Ku Klux? He must think I haven't anything to do but chin. I don't know why I keep him here, sometimes I think he'll drive me crazy."
The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their own suggested appalling complications to her mind. "I suppose I won't get a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then." "There's plenty of time to think about that, mother," answered Janet. "I'd want to have everything decent and regular," Hannah insisted.
She could understand and to a certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him; he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent most of his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off Ditmar's objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as, "Before we come to that, let me say a word just here." Ditmar hated words.
There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax, when some incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise that had absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking