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قراءة كتاب The Stingy Receiver

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‏اللغة: English
The Stingy Receiver

The Stingy Receiver

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 7

perhaps they faltered suddenly in their tracks. For one single conspicuous instant,—blonde as the moon, swarth as a pine tree's shadow,—they stood staring helplessly here, there, everywhere into a blur of frankly upturned faces. Then without an atom's warning a lone woman at the small table just in front of them jumped to her feet.

"Why, of course, you poor dears!" she beamed. "You want to get seats together!" And fled, still beaming, to the one remaining vacant seat at a far table in the corner.

A graven image could scarcely have helped grinning at the absurdity of the incident. And the Young Doctor was by no means a graven image. As for the girl, she giggled out right, and with an impulse scarcely American pulled out the Young Doctor's chair for him before she, herself, darted down into the more crumpled place which the other woman had just vacated. "After all," she conceded shruggingly, "it is not of such a consequence!" 46Only the flaming color in her cheeks belied her nonchalance.

With his left hand reaching for the menu and his right hand exploring his pockets, the Young Doctor sought to show that he also was perfectly nonchalant.

"It—it's been a—a very cold day, hasn't it?" he essayed experimentally.

From her own frowning contemplation of the card before her the girl lifted her amazingly blue eyes.

"No-o," she said. "I think the chicken soup would be more of a taste than the bouillon."

"What I remarked," persisted the Young Doctor, "was that the weather—the weather—" With his right hand still in his pocket, a most curious expression of shock passed suddenly over his face. His pocketbook was gone! Quite desperately he studied the distance to the telephone booth, the quickest path to the door,—any direction, any excuse that would snatch him soonest out of the horrid predicament of finding himself penniless at a perfectly strange restaurant in the company of 47a perfectly strange girl. Yet if he did bolt thus without explanation, as was certainly his most immediate impulse, what possible inference could the girl draw, except something crudely harsh and derogatory to her own frankly guileless personality. With a quite unwonted flush at his cheek bones he decided to make explanations. "Excuse me," he grinned with a sharp edging back of his chair, "but it will not be my pleasure after all to—to sample the chicken soup with you. Some mutt back there—while I was picking up those cursed toys—" Quite frantically again he began to rummage through all his pockets. "Some mutt has pinched my pocketbook," he finished perfectly simply.

"What?" cried the girl. "What?" With her eyes still staring blue and wide, she reached out a slim, strong detaining hand to his sleeve. "You mean that you cannot thus have any supper?" she frowned. "And the night also so dark and so cold? Why, what nonsense!" she beamed suddenly. "I have moneys to drown! No? Is it 'to burn' that you say?" she corrected herself. And thrust her own purse at him. Chucklingly like 48a child she began to rock herself to and fro. "Certainly it is all of a very great fatedness!" she reveled. "First you pick up my shoppings for me! And now it is that I pick up your supper for you! What? No?" she stammered as the Young Doctor quite curtly refused the purse and rose very definitely to his feet. Across the translucent blondness of her upturned face astonishment, incredulity, glowered suddenly like a dark shadow. "What? No? Is it then so correct?" she protested. "Is it kind? Is it senselike? That for so small a trifle you should—'snub' is it that you say, a stranger in a strange land? Certainly it was not of my boldness," she quickened. "But of the boldness of that demented woman yonder, that I sit here!" Then as suddenly as it had come all the shadow vanished from her face leaving just laughter again and a vaguely provocative sort of challenge. "Oh, go if it seems most best to be of such a silliness!" she said. "But if you go I shall certainly laugh! Laugh with loudness, I mean! Right out! And like this, with the handles of my knife and fork," she threatened to illustrate, "I will beat upon the table while 49I laugh! Bah!" she gesticulated encouragingly towards the deserted chair, "What is the price of a supper between two gentlemans?"

"Oh, of course, if you feel like that!" conceded the Young Doctor as he slipped back into his seat. "Quite frankly," he admitted, "I should hate to be even the innocent cause of your beating upon the table with the handles of your knife and fork. So if you really and truly think I look honest," he confided with an exaggerated resumption of interest in the bill of fare. "Let me see. Sixty cents, is it? And the tip? And two cents for a postage stamp? Yes, I surely ought to be able to return that much by at least noon to-morrow." Without a flicker of expression he lifted his dark eyes to hers.

Without a flicker of expression she resumed the conversation at the exact point apparently where she had been most reluctant to leave it off.

"And so," she brightened. "After the chicken soup, would it not seem to you, for instance, that turkey would be infinitely more chic than—than corned beef?"

Quite regardless of his possible negative she 50turned quickly and summoned a heavy-faced waitress to her.

"Behold it is now a dinner party!" she confided blithely to the perfectly indifferent woman. "The soup, the turkey, the best of your salads, the blackest of your coffee! Everything very chic!"

"Very what?" queried the waitress.

"Very quick!" interposed the Young Doctor.

Once again without a flicker of expression the dark eyes and the blue challenged each other across the narrow width of white table cloth.

Then the owner of the blue eyes reached out and drained her glass of ice water at a single draught.

"Ah!" she shivered. "I also am in more hurry than you. But it would not seem to me polite to nag about it."

"Oh, I beg your pardon," stammered the Young Doctor, and retreated in turn to his own glass of ice water. It was not until the soup course was almost over that he succumbed to any further conversational impulse, and even then indeed it was formality rather than 51sociability that drove him to the effort. "Seeing that you are so kind," he succeeded in enunciating. "And so—so trusting," he relaxed ever so slightly, "the least I can do certainly is to identify myself. My name is Sam Kendrue. And I am a doctor."

"So-o?" conceded the girl without enthusiasm. Quite frankly she made it clear that the waitress approaching with the turkey was the only fact in the world that concerned her at that immediate moment. Yet as one who would conscientiously acknowledge on second thought that no honest bit of information was ever really to be scoffed at, she laid down her knife and fork presently and surveyed the Young Doctor with a slightly reviving interest. "Sam? Sam Kendrue?" she repeated painstakingly. "My name is Solvei Kjelland!" she announced with brisk matter-of-factness, and resumed her eating.

"Your name is—what?" puzzled the Young Doctor.

"Solvei Kjelland," she smiled ever so faintly. "S-o-l-v-e-i," she spelled out as one quite familiarly accustomed to such a task. "K-j-e-l-l-a-n-d. I am a Norwegian!" she 52 flared up suddenly with the ecstatic breathlessness of one who confides a really significant surprise.

"A Norwegian?" rallied the Young Doctor. For the first time, behind the quick shield of his hand, a little teasing smile began to twitch. "Really, you—you surprise me!" he recovered with an almost instantly forced gravity. "From your accent now, I had supposed all along that you were—er—Celtic!"

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