Love Stories eBook

Mary Roberts Rinehart
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 282 pages of information about Love Stories.

Love Stories eBook

Mary Roberts Rinehart
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 282 pages of information about Love Stories.

“Oh, of course,” very stiffly.

“I cannot see why you disapprove.  Something had to be done.”

“I cannot see that you had to do it; but it’s your own affair, of course.  Only——­”

“Please go on.”

“Well, one cannot touch dirt without being soiled.”

“I think you will be sorry you said that,” said the Probationer stiffly.  And she went down the staircase, leaving him alone.  He was sorry, of course; but he would not say so even to himself.  He thought of the Probationer, with her eager eyes and shining hair and her warm little heart, ringing the bell of the Avenue house and making her plea—­and his blood ran hot in him.  It was just then that the parrot spoke on the other side of the chimney.

“Gimme a bottle of beer!” it said.  “Nice cold beer!  Cold beer!”

The interne walked furiously toward the sound.  Must this girl of the streets and her wretched associates follow him everywhere?  She had ruined his life already.  He felt that it was ruined.  Probably the Probationer would never speak to him again.

The Dummy was sitting on a bench, with the parrot on his knee looking rather queer from being smuggled about under a coat and fed the curious things that the Dummy thought a bird should eat.  It had a piece of apple pie in its claw now.

“Cold beer!” said the parrot, and eyed the interne crookedly.

The Dummy had not heard him, of course.  He sat looking over the parapet toward the river, with one knotted hand smoothing the bird’s ruffled plumage and such a look of wretchedness in his eyes that it hurt to see it.  God’s fools, who cannot reason, can feel.  Some instinct of despair had seized him for its own—­some conception, perhaps, of what life would never mean to him.  Before it, the interne’s wrath gave way to impotency.

“Cold beer!” said the parrot wickedly.

IV

The Avenue Girl improved slowly.  Morning and evening came the Dummy and smiled down at her, with reverence in his eyes.  She could smile back now and sometimes she spoke to him.  There was a change in the Avenue Girl.  She was less sullen.  In the back of her eyes each morning found a glow of hope—­that died, it is true, by noontime; but it came again with the new day.

“How’s Polly this morning, Montmorency?” she would say, and give him a bit of toast from her breakfast for the bird.  Or:  “I wish you could talk, Reginald.  I’d like to hear what Rose said when you took the parrot.  It must have been a scream!”

He brought her the first chrysanthemums of the fall and laid them on her pillow.  It was after he had gone, while the Probationer was combing out the soft short curls of her hair, that she mentioned the Dummy.  She strove to make her voice steady, but there were tears in her eyes.

“The old goat’s been pretty good to me, hasn’t he?” she said.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Love Stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.