And Colonel Tom Rainey, who had for months talked
of nothing but factory efficiency and of what he and
young Sam McPherson were going to do in the way of
enlarging the business, began the next morning a tirade
against women that lasted the rest of his life.
CHAPTER V
Sue Rainey had long touched the fancy of the youths
of Chicago society who, while looking at her trim
little figure and at the respectable size of the fortune
behind it, were yet puzzled and disconcerted by her
attitude toward themselves. On the wide porches
at golf clubs, where young men in white trousers lounged
and smoked cigarettes, and in the down-town clubs,
where the same young men spent winter afternoons playing
Kelly pool, they spoke of her, calling her an enigma.
“She’ll end by being an old maid,”
they declared, and shook their heads at the thought
of so good a connection dangling loosely in the air
just without their reach. From time to time,
one of the young men tore himself loose from the group
that contemplated her, and, with an opening volley
of books, candy, flowers and invitations to theatres,
charged down upon her, only to have the youthful ardour
of his attack cooled by her prolonged attitude of indifference.
When she was twenty-one, a young English cavalry officer,
who came to Chicago to ride in the horse show had,
for some weeks, been seen much in her company and
a report of their engagement had been whispered through
the town and talked of about the nineteenth hole at
the country clubs. The rumour proved to be without
foundation, the attraction to the cavalry officer
having been a certain brand of rare old wine the colonel
had stored in his cellar and a feeling of brotherhood
with the swaggering old gun maker, rather than the
colonel’s quiet little daughter.
After the beginning of his acquaintanceship with her,
and all during the days when he stirred things up
in the offices and shops of the gun company, tales
of the assiduous and often needy young men who were
camped on her trail reached Sam’s ears.
They would be in at the office to see and talk with
the colonel, who had several times confided to Sam
that his daughter Sue was already past the age at
which right-minded young women should marry, and in
the absence of the father two or three of them had
formed a habit of stopping for a word with Sam, whom
they had met through the colonel or Jack Prince.
They declared that they were “squaring themselves
with the colonel.” Not a difficult thing
to do, Sam thought, as he drank the wine, smoked the
cigars, and ate the dinners of all without prejudice.
Once, at luncheon, Colonel Tom discussed these young
men with Sam, pounding on a table so that the glasses
jumped about, and calling them damned upstarts.
Copyrights
Windy McPherson's Son from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
