His mother's sputter of indignation died rapidly away. It was, indeed,
her notion that the guardians of the public peace should show some degree
of sobriety, respect, neatness, and self-control, as well as a reasonable
familiarity with the accents of the country; but her Arcadia was full of
painful discrepancies, and she did not add to her own pain by too serious
an attempt to reconcile them. Besides, what is a policeman compared with
a detective?
Mabel, released from the arm of the law, jarred over another line of car
tracks, whereon a long row of monsters glared at one another's slow
advances with a single great red eye, and then she struck a freer gait on
the succeeding stretch of Belgian blocks. Presently she passed a lofty
building which rose in colonnades one above another, but whose walls were
stained with smoke, whose windows were half full of shattered panes,
and whose fraudulent metallic cornice curled over limply and jarred and
jangled in the evening breeze--one more of the vicissitudes of mercantile
life.
"Well, I'm glad the fire-fiend hasn't got Marshall & Co. yet," said the
young man, restored to good-humor by the sight of another's misfortune.
He used unconsciously the old firm name.
"But he'd get us fast enough if the insurance was taken off," declared
Jane. "Do you know, Dicky," she went on, "how much that item costs us a
year? Or have you any idea how much it has amounted to in the last
twenty, without our ever getting one cent back? Well, there's ten
thousand in the Hartford and eight in the Monongahela and eleven in--"
"Dear me, Jane!" exclaimed her brother, in some surprise; "where do you
pick up all this?"
Rosy turned her head half round.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25