The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Counterfeit Presentment and The Parlour Car, by William Dean Howells

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Title: A Counterfeit Presentment and The Parlour Car

Author: William Dean Howells

Release Date: August 14, 2013 [eBook #43469]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT.
A COMEDY.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

And published with Mr. Howells's sanction.

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE.

THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK. 2 VOLS.

OUT OF THE QUESTION and AT THE

SIGN OF THE SAVAGE.

THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY.

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 2 VOLS.

A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY and

TONELLI'S MARRIAGE.

Edinburgh: David Douglas.
London: Hamilton, Adams and Co.

---

A COUNTERFEIT
PRESENTMENT

AND

THE PARLOUR CAR

BY

WILLIAM D. HOWELLS

Author's Edition

EDINBURGH
DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET
1882

Edinburgh University Press

T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.

Frederic Ernest Allsopp.

CONTENTS

A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT.

(The Scene is always in the Parlour of the Ponkwasset Hotel.)

I.

Bartlett and Cummings.

ON a lovely day in September, at that season when the most sentimental of the young maples have begun to redden along the hidden courses of the meadow streams, and the elms, with a sudden impression of despair in their languor, betray flecks of yellow on the green of their pendulous boughs,—on such a day at noon, two young men enter the parlour of the Ponkwasset Hotel, and deposit about the legs of the piano the burdens they have been carrying: a camp-stool namely, a field-easel, a closed box of colours, and a canvas to which, apparently, some portion of reluctant nature has just been transferred. These properties belong to one of the young men, whose general look and bearing readily identify him as their owner: he has a quick, somewhat furtive eye, a full brown beard, and hair that falls in a careless mass down his forehead, which, as he dries it with his handkerchief, sweeping the hair aside, shows broad and white; his figure is firm and square, without heaviness, and in his movement as well as in his face there is something of stubbornness, with a suggestion of arrogance. The other, who has evidently borne his share of the common burdens from a sense of good comradeship, has nothing of the painter in him, nor anything of this painter's peculiar temperament: he has a very abstracted look and a dark, dreaming eye: he is pale, and does not look strong. The painter flings himself into a rocking chair and draws a long breath.

Cummings (for that is the name of the slighter man, who remains standing as he speaks).—"It's warm, isn't it?" His gentle face evinces a curious and kindly interest in his friend's sturdy demonstrations of fatigue.

Bartlett.—"Yes, hot—confoundedly." He rubs his handkerchief vigorously across his forehead, and then looks down at his dusty shoes, with apparently no mind to molest them in their dustiness. "The idea of people going back to town in this weather! However, I'm glad they're such asses; it gives me free scope here. Every time I don't hear