Mary Heaton Vorse

“ They stood there, well dressed and tranquil, looked around a moment and wandered on; the men were Boothby, who had once been a suitor of Louise's, and Louise's brother.
Boothby—of all men in the world, Boothby! Never would Boothby have taken a stray girl, picked up in a restaurant, for a day's outing, Boothby was fastidious, scholarly, very much of a gentleman, and removed by a hundred years of training from the possibility of a small irregularity like this coming into his decent, well-ordered life.
Miss Sanders had followed Jimsie's gaze. ”

“ There was Louise in her shady, cool home, while Jimsie—poor Jimsie—toiled on and on in the heat of a great city, giving his life to work, denying himself even the small luxury of a quiet place to eat for Louise's sake; saving—yes, actually saving, putting aside money—for the home that they would make together. ”

“ Youth, for which numberless sandwiches before swimming have no terrors.
Without hesitating, she made for the water and plunged in, without preliminary screams or hesitations, and made her way expertly beyond the line of surf and struck out. Jimsie followed. Together they worked out, now down in the hollow of an incoming wave, now rising buoyantly on its crest. The life-boat man kept his eyes on them. ”

“ He had once spent a great deal of time with Edith himself, and he couldn't but feel it was a comedown for her to take up with Darrow.
It was pretty hard lines for a man all through! Your friends go back on you—they don't care a hang where you spend your last Saturday; the girl you're engaged to wants to go to a fool garden party, and doesn't care enough for you to give it up for your sake! But then, Jimsie thought magnanimously, young girls like amusement and gaiety—let Louise go and enjoy herself. Perhaps she'd miss Jimsie. ”

“ So that was why Jimsie, a man engaged to be married, was indulging in the emotions of a sixteen-year-old boy who has quarreled with his sweetheart. But a man cannot stay a boy forever, and Fate sometimes chooses a series of odd events to make a man of him.
Meantime here was Jimsie, at the beginning of his last Saturday afternoon of summer, eating alone in a restaurant hideous with noise. ”

“ After all, it was not a thing to throw a man into the outer darkness for; still, one couldn't expect girls brought up like Louise to understand. Jimsie hadn't learned yet that affection will give a woman a clairvoyance as to the state of things that no limitations of up-bringing can affect. ”

“ At sight of his companion ready for her dip, Jimsie gave a little whistle of surprise. Involuntarily there came to his mind a little colored girl's observation to one of his aunts:
"Mis' Sadie, de Lo'd ain't slighted yo', not in de leastest particular."
More than ever Miss Sanders gave the impression, both in her beauty and in her unconsciousness of the people who noticed it, of some statue placed in a crowded thoroughfare. Youth Triumphant was what she seemed; Youth, that neither work in a city or summer heat can tarnish ”

“ Jimsie confessed, "I never have."
"Well, say, you ain't never danced, then," Miss Sanders informed him. "There ain't no dancing at any other time that's thirty cents to it."
They made their way to the dancing pavilion. Ever and anon Miss Sanders stopped to partake of what she termed "lunch cart grub," and all along their progress down the crowded street she waved greetings to this person and that. Her acquaintance was apparently enormous, and all of her friends seemed to be at Coney Island. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1966, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 56 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”