FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   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  
141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   >>   >|  
relieve my feelings." "Anything wrong?" "Everything's wrong. I've just been having tea with Bill and his Mabel." "Oh, ah!" said Archie, interested. "And what's the verdict?" "Guilty!" said Lucille. "And the sentence, if I had anything to do with it, would be transportation for life." She peeled off her gloves irritably. "What fools men are! Not you, precious! You're the only man in the world that isn't, it seems to me. You did marry a nice girl, didn't you? YOU didn't go running round after females with crimson hair, goggling at them with your eyes popping out of your head like a bulldog waiting for a bone." "Oh, I say! Does old Bill look like that?" "Worse!" Archie rose to a point of order. "But one moment, old lady. You speak of crimson hair. Surely old Bill--in the extremely jolly monologues he used to deliver whenever I didn't see him coming and he got me alone--used to allude to her hair as brown." "It isn't brown now. It's bright scarlet. Good gracious, I ought to know. I've been looking at it all the afternoon. It dazzled me. If I've got to meet her again, I mean to go to the oculist's and get a pair of those smoked glasses you wear at Palm Beach." Lucille brooded silently for a while over the tragedy. "I don't want to say anything against her, of course." "No, no, of course not." "But of all the awful, second-rate girls I ever met, she's the worst! She has vermilion hair and an imitation Oxford manner. She's so horribly refined that it's dreadful to listen to her. She's a sly, creepy, slinky, made-up, insincere vampire! She's common! She's awful! She's a cat!" "You're quite right not to say anything against her," said Archie, approvingly. "It begins to look," he went on, "as if the good old pater was about due for another shock. He has a hard life!" "If Bill DARES to introduce that girl to Father, he's taking his life in his hands." "But surely that was the idea--the scheme--the wheeze, wasn't it? Or do you think there's any chance of his weakening?" "Weakening! You should have seen him looking at her! It was like a small boy flattening his nose against the window of a candy-store." "Bit thick!" Lucille kicked the leg of the table. "And to think," she said, "that, when I was a little girl, I used to look up to Bill as a monument of wisdom. I used to hug his knees and gaze into his face and wonder how anyone could be so magnificent." She gave the unoffending table anothe
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   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  
141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Archie

 

Lucille

 
crimson
 
begins
 

approvingly

 
refined
 

horribly

 
slinky
 
creepy
 

dreadful


manner
 
Oxford
 

listen

 

common

 
vermilion
 

vampire

 
imitation
 

insincere

 

monument

 

wisdom


kicked

 

window

 

magnificent

 

unoffending

 

anothe

 

flattening

 

taking

 

Father

 
surely
 

introduce


scheme

 
wheeze
 

Weakening

 

weakening

 

chance

 

bright

 

precious

 

running

 

popping

 

bulldog


females

 

goggling

 

Everything

 

relieve

 

feelings

 
Anything
 
interested
 

peeled

 

gloves

 

irritably