That the exclusive Miss Grayson should now have invited him to
pass some days at her home had brought with it a thrill of greater
delight. Her opinion of the boy had changed somewhat. His
willingness to put up with the discomforts of the village inn--"a
truly dreadful place," to quote one of Miss Felicia's own letters
--and to continue to put up with them for more than two years,
while losing nothing of his good-humor and good manners, had
shaken her belief in the troubadour and tin-armor theory, although
nothing in Jack's surroundings or in his prospects for the future
fitted him, so far as she could see, to life companionship with so
dear a girl as her beloved Ruth--a view which, of course, she kept
strictly to herself.
But she still continued to criticise him, at which Peter would rub
his hands and break out with:
"Fine fellow!--square peg in a square hole this time. Fine fellow,
I tell you, Felicia!"
He receiving in reply some such answer as:
"Yes, quite lovely in fairy tales, Peter, and when you have taught
him--for you did it, remember--how to shovel and clean up
underbrush and split rocks--and that just's what Ruth told me he
was doing when she took a telegram to her father which had come to
the house--and he in a pair of overalls, like any common workman--
what, may I ask, will you have him doing next? Is he to be an
engineer or a clerk all his life? He might have had a share in his
uncle's business by this time if he had had any common-sense;"
Peter retorting often with but a broad smile and that little gulp
of satisfaction--something between a chuckle and a sigh--which
always escaped him when some one of his proteges were living up to
his pet theories.
Pages:
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267