Philip Curtiss

“ Then suddenly, as if in lieu of the fat family banker and guardian, the old head waiter came bustling up with a steaming chafing-dish and—dear, old soul—the beaming feeling that he was doing a kindly thing.
As if coming out from a dream world, a state in which he had been held for hours, Bellsmith suddenly heard the clatter and noise of the dining-room starting up around him and made out shapes of men and women leaning over tables, talking nonchalently. Looking across the table he saw the girl watching him with amused, understanding eyes. ”

“ Tears before, the whole Bellsmith tribe—colored valet, ladies'-maids, old aunts, and all, a company of never less than eight or ten souls—had been accustomed, once every year, to descend upon the Massapauk in a majestic caravan headed, patriarchally, by Arnold Bellsmith the senior and remain there for two or three weeks to escape the nervous ordeal of spring cleaning with its accompanying horrors of scaffoldings and plasterers. ”

“ The girl made a quick gesture. "You said that you did n't do anything—no work, no career, no nonsense of that kind,—but I was betting mentally ten to one that in another minute you would add something about being ashamed of it or about yours being a useless kind of existence or about having 'plans in the works,' and you did n't say a thing of the kind. You just plain loaf. Is that it?"
Bellsmith looked up in mild astonishment. "And why should n't I? Why should I want to work?"
The girl gave up hopelessly. "I know that you are a professor or something unreal of that kind. ”