Читать книгу Hope Mills; Or, Between Friend and Sweetheart - Amanda M. Douglas - Страница 6

Jack guessed what was passing in her mind. From his father he had inherited a kind of womanish intuition. A pleasant-tempered man Bernard Darcy had always been called, but it was that delicate tact, the intuitive knowledge of what would be pleasant to others.

"What else can I do here, Sylvie?" Jack cried with sudden heat. "If the chance ever comes, I shall be fitted for a good business man. You may think there is no worthy ambition in that, but wait. Do not judge me too hastily."

"I am impatient at times, I know; but it is because I see your capabilities, and I can't bear to think of your going through the world unappreciated."

"Do not worry about that. Good-night!" rather abruptly. "Miss Barry, I have forgotten myself. Pleasant dreams!"

"And we did not have our old hymn, after all," said Sylvie regretfully.

Jack took the short cut across the garden. There was a dim light in the sitting-room; and his mother lay in the hammock on the latticed porch, her favorite evening resort. She came in now, and Jack bolted the doors. Then, with a good-night kiss, he went to his room, and in ten minutes was asleep. Sylvie, on the other hand, girl-like, tossed and tumbled. Why was the world so queer and awry and obstinate? After all, you could do so little with it. Your plans came to nought so easily. Lizzie Wise, in her Sunday-school class, preferred going in the mill, and buying herself cheap finery, because the other girls did it. And so all through. You tried to train some one, and he or she followed the ignis fatuus more readily than any high, ennobling truth. It was hard lifting people out of their old grooves.

How bright and entertaining Jack had been this evening! Of course Irene had not remembered him. Would she be vexed, Sylvie wondered,—she who held herself up so high, and believed in a separate world as it were?