Mr. Opp. Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
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Название: Mr. Opp
Автор: Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066146719
isbn:
“Do you reckon she’d sell it?” asked Mr. Opp, anxiously.
“Sell it?” said Jimmy. “Why, she’s ’most ready to give it away to keep from having to pay Pete Aker’s rent for the shop. Say—Mr. Gall—up,” he called up the street to a man who was turning the corner, “is Mrs. Gusty at home?”
[p58]
The man, thus accosted, turned and came toward them.
“Who is Mr. Gallop?” asked Mr. Opp.
“He’s the new telephone girl,” said Jimmy, with relish; “ain’t been here but a month, and he’s doing the largest and most profitable trade in tending to other folks’s business you ever seen. Soft! Why, he must ’a’ been raised on a pillow—He always puts me in mind of a highly educated pig: it sorter surprises and tickles you to see him walkin’ round on his hind legs and talking like other people. Other day one of the boys, just to devil him, ast him to drive his team out home. I liked to ’a’ died when I seen him tryin’ to turn the corner, pullin’ ‘Gee’ and hollerin’ ‘Haw’ with every breath. Old mules got their legs in a hard knot trying to do both at once, and the boys says when Gallop got out in the country he felt so bad about it he got down and ’pologized to the mules. How ’bout that, Gallop—did you!” he concluded as the subject of the conversation arrived upon the scene.
[p59]
The new-comer, a plump, fair young man, who held one hand clasped affectionately in the other, blushed indignantly, but said nothing.
“This here is Mr. Opp,” went on Jimmy; “he wants to see Mrs. Gusty. Do you know whether he will ketch her at home or not?”
Mr. Gallop was by this time paying the tribute of many an admiring glance to every detail of Mr. Opp’s costume, and Mr. Opp, realizing this, assumed an air of cosmopolitan nonchalance, and toyed indifferently with his large watch-fob.
When Mr. Gallop’s admiration and attention had become focused upon Mr. Opp’s ring, he suddenly turned on the faucet of his conversation, and allowed such a stream of general information to pour forth that Mr. Opp quite forgot to look imposing.
“Mrs. Gusty telephoned early this morning to Mrs. Dorsey that she would come over and help her make preserves. Mrs. Dorsey got a big load of peaches from her father across the river. He’s [p60] been down with the asthma, and had to call up the doctor twice in the night. And the doctor couldn’t get the right medicine in town, and had me call up the city. They are going to send it down on the Big Sandy, but she’s stuck in the locks, and goodness knows when she’ll get here. She’s—”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Mr. Opp, politely but firmly, “I’ve got to see Mrs. Gusty on very important business. Have you any idea whatsoever of when she will return back home?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Gallop, eager to oblige. “She’s about home by this time. Miss Lou Diker is making her a dress, and she telephoned she’d be by to try it on ’bout four o’clock. I’ll go up there with you, if you want me to.”
“Why don’t you drive him!” suggested Jimmy. “You can borrow a pair of mules acrost the street.”
“Mr. Opp,” said Mr. Gallop, feelingly, as they walked up Main Street, “I wouldn’t treat a’ insect like he treats me.”
[p61]
“Oh, you mustn’t mind Jimmy,” said Mr. Opp, kindly; “he always sort of enjoys a little joke as he goes along. Why, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he even made a joke on me sometime. How long have you been in Cove City?”
“Just a month,” said Mr. Gallop. “It must look awful little to you, after all the big cities you been used to.”
Mr. Opp lengthened his stride. “Yes,” he said largely; “quite small, quite little, in fact. No place for a business man; but for a professional man, a man that requires leisure to sort of cultivate his brain and that means to be a influence in the community, it’s a good place, a remarkably good place.”
A hint, however vague, dropped into the mind of Mr. Gallop, caused instant fermentation. From long experience he had become an adept at extracting information from all who crossed his path. A preliminary interest, a breath or two of flattery by way of anesthetic, and his victim’s secret was out before he knew it.
“Reckon you are going up to talk [p62] insurance to Mrs. Gusty,” he ventured tentatively.
“No; oh, no,” said Mr. Opp. “I formerly was in the insurance business, some time back. Very little prospects in it for a man of my nature. I have to have a chance to sorter spread out, you know—to use my own particular ideas about working things out.”
“What is your especial line?” asked Mr. Gallop, deferentially.
“Shoe—” Mr. Opp began involuntarily, then checked himself—“journalism,” he said, and the word seemed for the moment completely to fill space.
At Mrs. Gusty’s gate Mr. Gallop stopped.
“I guess I ought to go back now,” he said regretfully; “the telephone and telegraph office is right there in my room, and I never leave them day or night except just this one hour in the afternoon. It’s awful trying. The farmers begin calling each other up at three o’clock in the morning. Say, I wish you’d step in sometime. I’d just [p63] love to have you. But you are so busy and got so many friends, you won’t have much time for me, I guess.”
Mr. Opp thought otherwise. He said that no matter how pressed he was by various important duties, he was never too busy to see a friend. And he said it with the air of one who confers a favor, and Mr. Gallop received it as one who receives a favor, and they shook hands warmly and parted.
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