But that punch--it's hypocritical. It steals into your brain
as a little child steals its rosebud hand into yours, beguiling you with
prattle; but afterwards--well, if I had the choice, I'd rather be
chloroformed and struck sharply with an axe. I'd be my old self again
sooner." Whereupon he would have written a guarded piece for the paper
about this had I not dissuaded him. But I saw that I must at once have
with Miss Caroline what in a later day came to be called "a
heart-to-heart talk"; and I forthwith summoned what valor I could for
the ordeal.
"I never dreamed--I never suspected--how _should_ I?" she murmured
pathetically, after my opening speech of a few simple but telling
phrases. She listened in genuine horror while I gave the reasons why she
might justly regard the call of our minister and her entertainment of
the Club as nothing short of adventures--adventures which she had
survived scathless not but by the favor of an indulgent Providence.
"So _that_ is what those little white satin bows mean?" she asked, and I
said that it most emphatically was.
"I suspected it might be some kind of mourning for babies--a local
custom, you know, though it did seem queer.
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