Anne Warner

“ CADWALLADER leaned far back in his chair, tilting the foot that he was nursing idly to and fro. As he tilted his foot idly, so he twisted his moustache idly—the whole while he looked idly on at the fervent hurry of Botolph's dressing.
Botolph was feverishly anxious to be through and away. His uncle smiled. Once he had known what it was to be anxious and in a hurry, but now—well!—never now. Never now and never again.
Botolph was a handsome boy—it ran in the blood to be handsome. Cadwallader had been a handsome boy himself—some twenty years ago. ”

“ Botolph was gone! Laurence Cadwallader went to the dresser, took up the letter, returned to the chair which he had vacated five minutes before, and began to read:
"Do you know, my dear boy, I am on the verge of insanity! He is absolutely driving me mad. I begin to fear that it is my Nirvana, or Kama, or Juggernaut Car, and that he is it. Wherever I go I meet him, and when we don't meet by accident, he comes to the house. I have refused him four times, and he doesn't mind a bit. People arc beginning to talk. I am so unhappy. I am so sick of men. And they won't believe it. ”

“ He always seems to divine when Mamma is ill. I have told Clinton to attend to the fire frequently, but I almost feel sure that he has bribed Clinton, for sometimes he stays out a whole half-hour at a time. You don't know what it is to be alone a whole half-hour at a time with him. I get so blue over having made him so wretched, and so wild over the way he puts in his glass, and so nervous for fear he will ask me to marry him again!
"Oh, can't you come in at ten o'clock and break up the meeting? ”