Europe Revised by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
page 13 of 313 (04%)
page 13 of 313 (04%)
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land as breezy. So he could not have been an Englishman. Once
in a while there comes along an Englishman who is windy, and frequently you meet one who is drafty; but there was never a breezy Englishman yet. With that interest in other people's business which the close communion of a ship so promptly breeds in most of us, we fell to wondering who and what he might be; but the minute the suspect came into the salon for dinner the first night out I read his secret at a glance. He belonged to a refined song-and-dance team doing sketches in vaudeville. He could not have been anything else--he had jet buttons on his evening clothes. There was the young woman--she had elocutionary talents, it turned out afterward, and had graduated with honors from a school of expression--who assisted in getting up the ship's concert and then took part in it, both of those acts being mistakes on her part, as it proved. And there was the official he-beauty of the ship. He was without a wrinkle in his clothes--or his mind either; and he managed to maneuver so that when he sat in the smoking room he always faced a mirror. That was company enough for him. He never grew lonely or bored then. Only one night he discovered something wrong about one of his eyebrows. He gave a pained start; and then, oblivious of those of us who hovered about enjoying the spectacle, he spent a long time working with the blemish. The eyebrow was stubborn, though, and he just couldn't make it behave; so he grew petulant and fretful, and finally went away to bed in a huff. Had it not been for fear of stopping his watch, I am sure he would have slapped |
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