FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130  
131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   >>  
ow ridiculous it was, and not only so, but how far from original, I could give her papers of lemon Jackson-balls, hinting simultaneously that, though plump as her cheeks, they were not half so sweet; and through a figure, whose correct name I have since learned to be periphrasis, I could suggest how much my soul yearned to expire on her ruby lips, by asking if she had ever played doorkeeper; regretting that the atmosphere of refinement and intellectuality did not admit of that healthful recreation at Moodle's, and begging her to guess whom I would call out if I were doorkeeper myself. When she opened her blue eyes innocently, and said, "Miss Crickey?" the intimation was rejected with a melancholy dissatisfaction, which would have been disdain but for the character of my feelings to its source. And when, on my pressing her for the name of the favored mortal whom she would call out if she were doorkeeper, she slyly dropped her eyes and asked if Briggs sounded any thing like it, I savagely refused to consider the proposition at all, and for the rest of the evening ate sandwiches to that degree I wonder my life was not despaired of, and fled for relief to the lemony bowl. The result of this mad vortex having been colic and calomel, after my return to Barker's on that evening, I foreswore such dangerous excesses at the next bi-monthly; but putting a larger pair of stockings in each boot-heel, to impress Miss Tucker with a sense of what she had lost, I devoted myself during the earlier part of the evening to a growing young woman, of the name of Wagstaff, considerably older than myself and runing straight up and down from whatever side one might contemplate her. Her conversation was not entertaining, unless from the Chinese point of view, which, I understand, distinctly favors monosyllables, and she giggled at me so persistently that I feared Miss Tucker would think I must be making myself ridiculous; but, on her being sent to the piano, I stood and turned over her music with a consciousness that if I ever looked impressive it was then. All this I did in the effort to seem gay, although my heart was breaking. I had no comfort on earth save the thought that I had been brutal to Briggs, and that he sat in an obscure corner of the room among some little girls in Long Division, hiding, behind an assistant teacher's skirts, the whitey-brown toe which my blacking-brush refused to refresh, while I bore my grief upon a pair of new boo
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130  
131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   >>  



Top keywords:
evening
 

doorkeeper

 

refused

 
Briggs
 

ridiculous

 

Tucker

 

conversation

 

entertaining

 

impress

 

Chinese


persistently

 
stockings
 

feared

 
larger
 
giggled
 

distinctly

 

favors

 

monosyllables

 

understand

 

contemplate


considerably

 

Wagstaff

 

runing

 

devoted

 

earlier

 
growing
 

straight

 

brutal

 

obscure

 

thought


blacking

 

comfort

 
corner
 

whitey

 

teacher

 

Division

 

hiding

 

assistant

 

skirts

 

refresh


turned
 
consciousness
 

making

 

looked

 

impressive

 
breaking
 

putting

 
effort
 
played
 

regretting