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Little Eve Edgarton by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
page 10 of 133 (07%)
"Now just whom would you specially recommend for me?" he demanded
mirthfully. "Among all the feminine galaxy of bores and frumps that
seem to be congregated at this particular hotel--just whom would you
specially recommend for me? The stoop-shouldered, school-marmy Botany
dame with her incessant garden gloves? Or?--Or--?" His whole face
brightened suddenly with a rather extraordinary amount of humorous
malice: "Or how about that duddy-looking little Edgarton girl that I
saw you talking with this morning?" he asked delightedly. "Heaven
knows she's colorless enough to suit even you--with her
winter-before-spring-before-summer-before-last clothes and her voice
so meek you'd have to hold her in your lap to hear it. And her--"

"That 'duddy-looking' little Miss Edgarton--meek?" mused the Older Man
in sincere astonishment. "Meek? Why, man alive, she was born in a
snow-shack on the Yukon River! She was at Pekin in the Boxer
Rebellion! She's roped steers in Oklahoma! She's matched her
embroidery silks to all the sunrise tints on the Himalayas! Just why
in creation should she seem meek--do you suppose--to a--to
a--twenty-five-dollar-a-week clerk like yourself?"

"'A twenty-five-dollar-a-week clerk like myself?'" the Younger Man
fairly gasped. "Why--why--I'm the junior partner of the firm of Barton
& Barton, stock-brokers! Why, we're the biggest--"

"Is that so?" quizzed the Older Man with feigned surprise.
"Well--well--well! I beg your pardon. But now doesn't it all go to
prove just exactly what I said in the beginning--that it doesn't
behoove a single one of us to judge too hastily by appearances?"

As if fairly overwhelmed with embarrassment he sat staring silently
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