Lloyd Osbourne

“ I walked up and down, consigning Jones to—well, where I thought he belonged. I thought of the time I had wasted over the fellow—the good money—the hopes—I was savage with disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly calling me from the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge gate. There are moments when a man is better left alone. Besides, I was in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is a positive pleasure to pile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight per cent miserable it's hell not to reach par. ”

“ You're colossal, that's what you are!"
"I'm only in love," I said.
"Well, that's the love that moves mountains," he said. "If anybody had told me that I should . . . " He stopped irresolutely on the word.
"Oh, to think I have to stand for all that rot!" he bleated.
I was too wise to say a word. I simply motioned James to switch the car around and back up. I shooed Jones into the tonneau and turned the knob on him. He snuggled back in the cushions, and smiled—yes, smiled—with a beautiful, blue-eyed, faraway, indulgent expression that warmed me like spring sunshine. ”

“ Said to me, holding my hand, and, and that the only thing she didn't like about me was my name."
I contrived to get out, "Good heavens!" with the proper astonishment.
"I told her that Van Coort didn't strike me as being anything very extra."
"Wouldn't it have been wiser to—?"
"Oh, for myself, I'd do anything in the world for her. But a fellow has to show a little decent pride. A fellow owes something to his family, doesn't he? As a man I love the ground she walks on; as a Jones—well, if she feels like that about it—I told her she had better wait for a De Montmorency." ”

“ It cuts a fellow; it's humiliating; it is crool, that's what it is, awful crool, and I'll tell you the straight-out truth that I've cried over it!"
He looked quite capable of crying over it again, and his honest, manly face bore mute witness to his words. Though addressing himself to Miss Hemingway, his eyes were more often fixed on Grace Sinclair, and it was plain that it was her good opinion he valued most. But she was as merciless as Dolly, and showed not the least sign of relenting.
"We have decided that we do not care for the further pleasure of your acquaintance," said Miss Hemingway. ”

“ I was disgusted with the chump.
"She's the star above me," he said; "and I am crushed by my own presumption. Is there any such fool as the man that breaks his heart twice for the impossible?"
"But it isn't impossible," I cried.
"Hasn't she—as far as a woman can—hasn't she called you back to her? What more do you expect her to do? A woman's delicacy forbids her screaming for a man! I think Eleanor has already gone a tremendous way in just hinting—"
"You may be right," he said pathetically; "but then you may also be wrong. The risk is too terrible for me to run. ”

“ You don't realize what a good old place the world is until you've taken a chance on leaving it and weighed against death itself; all our little jealousies and misunderstandings seemed too trivial to count. It seemed enough that I loved him and that he loved me and that neither of us had broken anything—bones, I mean. It was sad, though, to think the poor little bubble was a goner and that we'd never hear its honest little pant again.
"If we had lived up to the comic papers, Morty," I said, "we would have spiflicated a red child, given a merry toot and disappeared in a cloud of dust!" ”

“ My repair bills, too, stopped as though by magic, and the bubble ran so well I guess people must have sat up nights with it! The engine would start at the half-turn of the crank; the clutches were adjusted to a hair; she speeded up to twenty now on the open throttle, which she had never done before except in the advertisement; she was the showiest, smartest, fastest little car in town, and when she miraculously went into red leather, edged with gold stampings, people used to fall over one another on the street. ”

“ Idleness is a grinding occupation, especially on Eighth Avenue in the morning.
Mrs. Jones was a thin, straight-backed, brisk old lady, with a keen tongue, and a Yankee faculty for coming to the point. I besought her indulgence, and laid the whole Eleanor matter before her—at least, as much of it as seemed wise. I appeared in the role of her son's warmest admirer and best friend.
"Surely you won't let Harry ruin his life from a mistaken sense of his duty to you?"
"Duty, fiddlesticks!" said she. "He's going to marry Bertha
McNutt!" ”

“ Bassity," said Dolly, "and improve your mind listening to us talk!"
"So long as I'm not the subject of it," observed Coal Oil Johnny ruefully.
"Oh, we can't bother about you for always," said Miss Hemingway. "You've had your little turn and must now give way to something mere important!"
"Delighted!" said Mr. Bassity.
"And don't look as though your own cigars were better than papa's," added Dolly.
"But they are," he retorted.
"Will nothing ever prevent your speaking the truth?" cried Miss Sinclair. "There ought to be tracts about the young man who always spoke the truth—and his awful end!" ”

“ I said ironically, "but you might as well give up the idea right now. And if he talked forty times fifteen minutes it wouldn't make the least difference in the world. He thinks he's so handsome and so well off and that so many girls are crazy about him that he only, has to whistle for you to come!"
"If it wasn't for Harry I would," she said; "that is, if he whistled loud enough and there wasn't too much of a crowd thinking he meant them! Oh, Virgie, it's just like Faversham to hear him talk, and I can't think how anybody could be such a little fool as to say no!" ”

“ She stopped the car and got out, and there, sure enough, one of the rear tires presented itself to her view in a state of melancholy collapse. It had picked up a horseshoe together with the three jagged nails adhering to it, and was patently, hopelessly, irretrievably punctured. Grace had seen a hundred repairs made on the road, but up to now she had never put her hands to the task herself. She brimmed over with the most correct theory, but had invariably relegated the practice to a skilful young man. ”

“ I said.
For the first time in our acquaintance Doctor Jones looked at me with suspicion. His blue eyes clouded. He was growing a little restive under my handling.
"You seem to make the matter a very personal one," he observed.
"Well, I love Freddy," I explained. "It naturally brings your own case very close to me. And then I am so positive that you love Eleanor and that Eleanor loves you. Put yourself in my place, Doctor! Do you mean that you'd do nothing to bring two such noble hearts together?" ”

“ I don't want to praise myself, but if I have one good quality it's staying power. I pleaded and argued, and expostulated and explained, with the determination of a man whose back is to the wall. I wasn't going to lose Freddy so long as there was breath in my body. However, it wasn't the least good in the world. Jones was as impervious as sole-leather, and as unshaken as a marble pillar. ”

“ With only five hundred dollars to go on, Harry and Nelly, of course, had to look about for more capital; and that was why they chose me to go in with them. I didn't have any capital except a rich father, but I suppose they thought that was the same thing. People are so apt to—though I never found it the same thing at all. Then, too, Nelly and I were bosom friends, and they naturally wanted to give me the first chance. Their original plan had been to have the bubble held in four equal shares, taking in Morty Truslow as the fourth. ”

“ Nevill generously threw in a groom with varicose veins. Small contributions, but thankfully received.
"Now, what you do," said Nevill, "is to go round right off and interview Bishop Jordan. He has sick people to burn!"
But I said Jones would get on to it if I deluged him with the misery of the slums.
"That's just where the bishop comes in," said Nevill. "There isn't a man more in touch with the saddest kind of poverty in New York—the decent, clean, shrinking poverty that hides away from all the deadhead coffee and doughnuts. If I was in your fix I'd fall over myself to reach Jordan!" ”

“ Eleanor Van Coort is a woman of a thousand—unimpeachable social position—a little fortune of her own—accomplished, handsome, charming, sought after—why, if you managed to win such a girl as that your mother would walk on air."
"No, she wouldn't. Bertha—"
"You're a pretty cheap lover," I said. "I don't set up to be a little tin hero, but I'd go through fire and water for my girl. Good heavens, love is love, and all the mothers—"
He let out a few more groans.
"Then, see here, Jones," I went on, "you owe some courtesy to our hostesses. If you went away to-night it would be an insult. ”

“ Then one morning, as we were at breakfast, a great big splendid Manton car—my car—came whisking up the drive and stopped in front of the house, and the expert—they had thrown him in for a week for nothing—him and an odometer and an ammeter, and a new kind of French spark-plug they wanted me to try—and a gasoline tester —the Mantons are such nice people to deal with in all those little ways—and the expert sent in word: would Miss Hardy come out and see her new car? ”

“ I said as we stopped at the bishop's door and I handed him up a dollar bill. "That's just the kind of a cold that makes graveyards hum!"
"I can't shake it off, sir," he said despondently. "Try what I can, and it's never no use!"
"There's one doctor in the world who can cure anything," I said; "Doctor Henry Jones, 1892 Eighth Avenue. I was worse than you two weeks ago, and now look at me! Take this five dollars, and for heaven's sake, man, put yourself in his hands quick."
Bishop Jordan was a fine type of modern clergyman. ”

“ When the tire was pumped up, and Grace was again about to take her place at the steering-wheel, the farmer sprang a fresh surprise.
"Hold on a minute," he said. "What's been making you miss so horribly on the off cylinder?"
"Oh, the whole engine has been acting like the dickens," she returned distressfully. "It hasn't been developing half its power. It's in one of its mean humors to-day, and behaving like a pig."
"Couldn't you take off that front thing and let's see what's the trouble?" said the countryman, jumping back into his drawl. ”

“ In fact, that car seemed to make everybody mean who was in the least way connected with it. I was a perfect pig myself, and Harry and Nelly were positively worse. It was one of our rules that the rider of the day should be answerable for any troubles or breakages that occurred when be (or she) was running the car. Naturally, there had to be some understanding of this kind, for personality counts a lot in automobiling, and often the chauffeur is more to blame than the machine. ”

“ Every day some new way of being killed, or some old way improved! My! but this is the dandiest of all!"
"There isn't the least danger if people are careful," said Grace, gazing out of the corner of her eye at three very loud and offensively jocular young men, their straw hats tilted at the back of their heads, who had also been arrested by the notice on the basket. They were flashily dressed, with race-tout written all over them, and their keen, impudent, tallowy faces filled her with sudden misgiving. ”

“ It's awful to care for a man as much as that. I thought it was splendid of him that he didn't try to kiss me. He simply took my hand and pulled off the captain's ring and said I had to give it back to him at once. Then I broke down altogether and began to cry like a baby, while Gerard got out and emptied the kerosene from the oil lamps into the exhaust valves. You see, pieces of scale from the inside of the cylinders had wedged against the exhaust-valve seats so that they wouldn't close tight, but leaked and leaked. ”

“ The three young sports, considerably the worse for wear, fled pell-mell for the barbed-wire fence that bordered the road, and went over it in the twinkling of an eye. Only a few bits of what they would probably have called "nobby pants," speckled here and there on the barbs, betrayed to later wayfarers this new instance of man's inhumanity to man.
"Do you know, we have never looked at the contact-box," said the farmer, returning to the car quite calmly to take up the interrupted thread of his conversation. ”