Quest of the Golden Girl, a Romance by Richard Le Gallienne
page 30 of 215 (13%)
page 30 of 215 (13%)
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My heart flooded over with tender pity for these poor sweet
women--though perhaps chiefly for my own sad lot in not encountering them,--and I conceived a great comprehensive love-poem to be entitled "The Girls that never can be Mine." Perhaps before the end of our tramp together, I shall have a few verses of it to submit to the elegant taste of the reader, but at present I have not advanced beyond the title. CHAPTER XI AN OLD MAN OF THE HILLS, AND THE SCHOOLMASTER'S STORY While occupying myself with these no doubt wanton reflections on the unfair division of opportunities in human life, I was leisurely crossing the common, and presently I came up with a pedestrian who, though I had little suspected it as I caught sight of him ahead, was destined by a kind providence to make more entertaining talk for me in half an hour than most people provide in a lifetime. He was an oldish man, turned sixty, one would say, and belonging, to judge from his dress and general appearance, to what one might call the upper labouring class. He wore a decent square felt hat, a shabby respectable overcoat, a workman's knitted waistcoat, and workman's corduroys, and he carried an umbrella. His upper part might have belonged to a small well-to-do tradesman, while his lower bore marks of recent bricklaying. |
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