Author: Upton Sinclair
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5829] [Yes,
we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This
file was first posted on September 10, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK, the Moneychangers ***
Charles Aldarondo and the Online Distributed Proofreading
team.
By Upton Sinclair
1908
“I am,” said Reggie Mann, “quite
beside myself to meet this Lucy Dupree.”
“Who told you about her?” asked Allan
Montague.
“Ollie’s been telling everybody about
her,” said Reggie. “It sounds really
wonderful. But I fear he must have exaggerated.”
“People seem to develop a tendency to exaggeration,”
said Montague, “when they talk about Lucy.”
“I am in quite a state about her,” said
Reggie.
Allan Montague looked at him and smiled. There
were no visible signs of agitation about Reggie.
He had come to take Alice to church, and he was exquisitely
groomed and perfumed, and wore a wonderful scarlet
orchid in his buttonhole. Montague, lounging back
in a big leather chair and watching him, smiled to
himself at the thought that Reggie regarded Lucy as
a new kind of flower, with which he might parade down
the Avenue and attract attention.
“Is she large or small?” asked Reggie.
“She is about your size,” said Montague,—which
was very small indeed.
Alice entered at this moment in a new spring costume.
Reggie sprang to his feet, and greeted her with his
inevitable effusiveness.
When he asked, “Do you know her, too?”
“Who? Lucy?” asked Alice. “I
went to school with her.”
“Judge Dupree’s plantation was next to
ours,” said Montague. “We all grew
up together.”
“There was hardly a day that I did not see her
until she was married,” said Alice. “She
was married at seventeen, you know—to a
man much older than herself.”
“We have never seen her since that,” added
the other. “She has lived in New Orleans.”
“And only twenty-two now,” exclaimed Reggie.
“All the wisdom of a widow and the graces of
an ingenue!” And he raised his hands with a
gesture of admiration.
“Has she got money?” he asked.
“She had enough for New Orleans,” was
the reply. “I don’t know about New
York.”
“Ah well,” he said meditatively, “there’s
plenty of money lying about.”
He took Alice away to her devotions, leaving Montague
to the memories which the mention of Lucy Dupree awakened.
