Читать книгу A Pasteboard Crown - Clara Morris - Страница 12

"Thank you!" beamed that gentleman. "And your charming mamma, how is she? Well? So glad! A very lovely woman. May I ask your present address, and your kind permission to call upon your parents—that, according to our foreign critics, is, I believe, the correct formula, since they declare that parents are governed absolutely by their children in America. Woodsedge? Broadway? Ah, yes—yes, near the new park the city is about opening—quite so! I—I shall do myself the pleasure of driving out to present my compliments to your mamma and renew my friendship with your father. Do allow me, Miss Dorrie—no trouble at all. I am on my way uptown, and I shall esteem it a pleasure to see you young ladies on to your home train."

And almost forcibly removing various packages from both girls' hands, he constituted himself their escort and guardian, feasting his eyes upon the fresh young beauty of Dorothy when the noise prevented talking. At the station he added to their parcels a couple of magazines and a box of chocolates, and, seeing them safely through the door that admitted them to their train's platform, he doffed his hat in farewell. And Dorothy gave him a rather forced smile and hasty good-by, while Sybil, with unsmiling lips, gave a short nod of her haughty young head, and William Henry Bulkley said, low: "You damned little cat," put on his hat again and went out, and, climbing into a car, added to himself: "But the other one—good Lord! When you come to talk about peaches, why——"