Instead of the Thorn. Clara Louise Burnham
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Название: Instead of the Thorn

Автор: Clara Louise Burnham

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

Серия:

isbn: 4064066200749

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ tion>

       Clara Louise Burnham

      Instead of the Thorn

      A Novel

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066200749

       CHAPTER I

       CHAPTER II

       CHAPTER III

       CHAPTER IV

       CHAPTER V

       CHAPTER VI

       CHAPTER VII

       CHAPTER VIII

       CHAPTER IX

       CHAPTER X

       CHAPTER XI

       CHAPTER XII

       CHAPTER XIII

       CHAPTER XIV

       CHAPTER XV

       CHAPTER XVI

       CHAPTER XVII

       CHAPTER XVIII

       CHAPTER XIX

       CHAPTER XX

       CHAPTER XXI

       CHAPTER XXII

       CHAPTER XXIII

       CHAPTER XXIV

       CHAPTER XXV

       CHAPTER XXVI

       CHAPTER XXVII

       Table of Contents

      AT THE SOUTH SHORE

      On a June evening, Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe were entertaining their New York friends the Lindsays at dinner at the South Shore Club. The dining-room, with its spacious semicircle of glass, is a place where Chicago may entertain New York with complacence, for the windows give upon Lake Michigan, whose billows break so close to the border of velvety grass that the effect is of dining on a yacht.

      The Lindsays were enamored of the great marine view, lovely in the long June evening, and with many an admiring comment watched the white gulls hover and wheel above the sunset water.

      Mrs. Radcliffe was a stout, white-haired woman, costumed with disregard of expense, and she habitually wore an expression of countenance which betokened general optimism.

      Mrs. Lindsay, of about her friend's age, was spare and lined of face, offering a contrast to the hostess's plump smoothness. She again raised a jeweled lorgnette to watch the wheeling gulls.

      "Oh, Chicago wouldn't be anything without the lake," remarked Mrs. Radcliffe complacently.

      "And this clubhouse is such a perfect place to watch it," returned her friend.

      "We have a very charming ballroom here," said Mrs. Radcliffe. "I'm sorry it isn't a formal dance night."

      The orchestra was playing a Hesitation Waltz, which reminded her. For the Hesitation had not yet been driven from the field by troops who cantered, and those strains were always sufficient to people the spacious ballroom until it was alive with dancers, old and young. Indeed, as one comic paper had it that season, "He who does not hesitate is lost." Just when or why silver threads among the gold ceased to relegate advancing years to a shelf above the dancers, it would be hard to say; but certain it is that the rosy walls behind the pure white columns in the popular ballroom threw their diffused and becoming light that season upon sometimes agile but always determined middle age, as well as upon slender youth.

      There is a point, however, where Terpsichore stands inexorably and says, "Thus far and no farther": a point where the wistful dancer realizes that all is Hesitation, and the Waltz balks. This is reached in the matron at the weight of two hundred pounds, and Mrs. Radcliffe had arrived there; so, like the spinster of the story, who settled down to contentment with her lot when she had "stopped strugglin'," Mrs. Radcliffe enjoyed peacefully her visits to the club, and invaded the ballroom only as a spectator.

      She looked up now at her friend. "Have you and Mr. Lindsay joined the one-stepping legion?" she asked.

      "No, we have not. We have children and rheumatism. You know that does make a difference." Mrs. Lindsay's bright, nervous eyes snapped, and she showed a set of artistic teeth.

      Mrs. СКАЧАТЬ