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The Other Girls

Chapter 4 NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT.

Word Count: 5043    |    Released on: 30/11/2017

viously done his father's, and walked out through the conservatory upon the slope of lawn scattered over with bright little flower-beds, among which his sister, with a large shade hat on, and a

ver to the Argenters' this long whi

u asked me to. And she has been h

ream, nor pout; nor even stand round to keep up the excitement. She was just cool and quiet, and took herself off properly. I don't know another girl that would have done so. She saved me out of the scrape as far as she was concerned; she might have made it ten times the muss it was. I'd rat

rrett l

at's-paw a sister mak

chestnuts too, sometimes," sa

trouble into the beautiful eyes, only to show how much too sweet and tender they really are ever to be permitted a perplexity, and what a touching and appealing thing it would be if a trouble should get into them in any earnest. "In

ll the time. That's what I tell Truesdaile, when he goes on about home, and what a thing it is to have a sister,-he doesn't exactly say my sister; I suppose he believes in the tenth comm

u can't. When Aunt

drop anything she might be about for an opportunity. I wonder if she ever goes back upon her tracks and finishes up? She's s

ook he

her hammock, and carrying them all to drive in her pony-wagon, and getting up hampers of fish and baskets of fruit, and beef sirloins by express, and feeding the

oft-sawder. Put some of those things together prettily, as you know how,

fruit and

're an ag

ical. I'm sure those

don't,

Rod! Drive me over, that's

ded too often in not being solitary, but in bringing him into company with people who knew about horses, or had them to show, and were planning fo

od, would be coals to Newcas

Argenter is too busy in town to look after it; and they've been cheated and disappointed right and left. They're not to blame for being

hing. "And I don't think I ever get very far

n an exuberance of gracious approval and beamingly serene content. "I'll t

d of Red Squirrel, but she would have been ups

and his sister coming up the drive, there flashed across her, by a curious association, the thought of

re not so very much worse, when the "people in the carriages,"-the right people,-r

,"-she turned back to her volume of "London Society," much and mixedly reconciled in her thoughts to two things that occurred to her at once,-one of them adding itself to the other as manifestly in the same remarkable order of providence; "that tip-out" from t

tters," she said to herself, complacen

orn, that married the man that kissed the maid-and so on, all the way back again. She counted them up as they went along. "There was the overturn," she would say, by and by "and there was Rodney Sherrett's call because of that, and then his sister's because no d

of an east wind, which the dwellers on Massachusetts Bay have always for a reserve of hope. Yet it may quite well occur to here and there an individual with a resolute purpose in the day, to actually live through it and pursue the intended plan, without realizing the extra degrees of Fahrenheit at all, and to learn with surprise at set of sun whe

o anything," she dimly thought; and putting the white polonaise into the structure of the House that Jack built, she interrupted herself no farther than presentl

re sheltering themselves in depths of gloom in the tomb-like coolness of their double walls. Builders' trowels and hammers had a sound that made you think of sparks struck out, as if the world were a great forge and all its matter at a white heat. Down in the poor, crowded places, where the gutters fumed with filth, and doors stood open upon hor

on men surreptitiously stretched themselves in shady corners on the grass, regardless of the police, until they should be found and ordered off; little babies in second-rate boarding-houses, where their fathers and mothers had to stay for cheapness the summer through wailed the helpless

Mrs. Arge

"Argie" in New York,-gone thither on some perplexing, hurried errand, which he had only half told her, and the half telling of which she had only half heard,-and remembered that the heat must be "awf

volume, and found that the serial s

"and neither Sylvie nor I can get into town in this heat, and

the stairs. She looked into the large

me through! I know they'd stay to tea and go home in the cool, if I only knew how to ask them; but if

message, because you could get into a house, but didn't know how to get out! And now you are grown up, you can get

'm awfully afrai

ind of acquaintance, or weren't as nice as any of them

that I hadn't got; or else, that there were things that they had nothing to do with that I know too much of. A kind of a-Poggowantimoc feeling, mother! Amy Sherrett is so fearfully refined,-all the way through! It does

well enough with her b

rk about boys. Besides,"-and Sylvie laughed a low, ga

Look over the album, and get at some music. Keep them without saying anything about it. When peopl

nd cool; that lovely black lace jacket with the violet lining, and your gray silk skirt

ng, and dark, rich Persian rugs, and inner window blinds folded behind lace curtains that fell like the foam of water

. She grew a great deal braver always when Mrs. Argenter came in. She borrowed a second consciousness from her in which she took courage, assured that all was right. Chairs and rugs gave her no such confidence, though she knew that the Sherretts themselves had

ely basket, wherein on damp, tender, bright green moss, clustered the most exquisite blossoms, and the most delicate trails of stem and leafage wandered and started up lightly, and at last fell like a veil over rim and ha

t," she said. And Mrs. Argenter admired and thanked, and then

she said; "and our first man was a tipsifier, and the last was a rogue. He sold off qu

. "I dare say he could recommend some one to you, if you liked;

hnes struggling into green tips, having lost their last growth of leaf and dropped all their flower buds, and several calmly enduring orange and lemon trees, gave all the suggestion of foliage tha

est to do well for the rockery, and whether it was in a good part of the house,-sufficiently shaded? Meanwhile, Amy and

eed not." And then Mrs. Argenter said so easily and of course, that they "certainly would not think of going now, when it would soon be really pleasant for a twilight drive; tea would be r

omical in its appeal, over Sylvie's shoulder, as she stood showing him a great scarl

nd what with the heat and the flies, I dare say he would take it with

genter laid another little bric

ody else who had meant before now to have left for home, had been delayed till after sundown. Somebody else would go over the road by da

flagon,-and ranging them all on the rustic veranda table,-something very different,-very grim,-at which the occupants of rooms near by shuddered as it passed their open doors,-was borne down the long, wide corridor to Number Five, in the Metropolitan; and a

ally, when the office in State Street would be closed. Close

go bare and un

kmayer, however, as he was just

," he said; and tearing it in two,

"They may both be delivered together after all," he continued to himself, as he turned away. "But it is all I can do. W

rd the call-click as she unlocked the room and came in after her half-hour supper tim

tled, as she spelled the signs along. She answered back when it was ended; then wrote ou

called to a youth opp

he Argenter Place. And mind h

m, gruffly. "I spose I mu

minister, or somebody. 'Tain't fit for it to go right to her, I know. Tel

that's what you mean," said Sim, putting the enve

in beside her, when Sim Atwill drove up the avenue in the rusty covered wagon that did telegraph errands. Red Squirrel did not q

is opportunity, and speaking to whom it might concer

t. "What shall I do? Won't you wait a minute, Miss Sherrett, until I see? Wo

irrel round," was Rodney's an

s silently passed up into the piazza again, he paid Sim the eighty cents

up-stairs in her dressing room, quite at the end of the long upper hall, chan

se to mother, whatever it is, coming this way. She has such a horror of a telegram.

may be-only grandma, perhaps? Do you s

s a hysterical sound in p

said Amy, kindl

stern Union T

, July 2

. Argenter, D

stroke. Insensible. Very se

Burkmaye

uplifting, were raised now with a wide terror in them, first to Rodne

Mrs. Argenter'

doing? Who is with you down there?" she sa

l about Amy as "Miss Sherrett," and all her fear of "nice girls," she dropped down on the lower step of the staircase

Don't cry. It mayn't be very bad, after all. You'll hear again in an hour or two. Can't I do som

ought to go right to New York, and we don't know where! O, dear!" She had lifted h

occurred to him all at once what thi

walked right on into the open, lighted apartment, Mrs. Argenter following, not daring to ask what she came and

ot all! I know how people bring news! Tell me the whole." And Sylvie sprang to her feet, hearing th

ake any difference-the different surrounding of the two? The great house-the lights-the servants-the friends; and t

ess: their mothers were both

n they are in the same story? These things are happening every day, and one gr

alike in high and low places,-alike with money and

ster to her from River Point, and then turned toward Dorbury Upper Village and the telegraph

h of the hour late

ck. His remains will be sent hom

p Burk

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