Contents ( 27)
- LADY BALTIMORE
- By Owen Wister
- LADY BALTIMORE
- I: A Word about My Aunt
- II: I Vary My Lunch
- III: Kings Port Talks
- IV: THE GIRL BEHIND THE COUNTER—I
- V: The Boy of the Cake
- VI: In the Churchyard
- VII: The Girl Behind the Counter—II
- VIII: Midsummer-Night's Dream
- IX: Juno
- X: High Walk and the Ladies
- XI: Daddy Ben and His Seed
- XII: From the Bedside
- XIII: The Girl Behind the Counter—III
- XIV: The Replacers
- XV: What She Came to See
- XVI: The Steel Wasp
- XVII: Doing the Handsome Thing
- XVIII: Again the Replacers
- XIX: Udolpho
- XX: What She Wanted Him For
- XXI: Hortense's Cigarette Goes Out
- XXII: Behind the Times
- XXIII: Poor Aunt Carola!
- XXIV: Post Scriptum
We stood chatting apart, he and I, while Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza walked across the street to the window of a shop, where old furniture was for sale at a high price; and it grew clearer to me what Beverly had innocently brought upon Mrs. Weguelin, and how he had brought it. The little quiet, particular lady had been pleased with his visit, and pleased with him. His good manners, his good appearance, his good English-trained voice, all these things must have been extremely to her taste; and then—more important than they—did she not know about his people? She had inquired, he told me, with interest about two of his uncles, whom she had last seen in 1858. "She's awfully the right sort," said Beverly. Yes, I saw well how that visit must have gone: the gentle old lady reviving in Beverly's presence, and for the sake of being civil to him, some memories of her girlhood, some meetings with those uncles, some dances with them; and generally shedding from her talk and manner the charm of some sweet old melody—and Beverly, the facile, the appreciative, sitting there with her at a correct, deferential angle on his chair, admirably sympathetic and in good form, and playing the old school. (He had no thought to deceive her; the old school was his by right, and genuinely in his blood, he took to it like a duck to the water.) How should Mrs. Weguelin divine that he also took to the nouveau jeu to the tune of Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza? And so, to show him some attention, and because she couldn't ask him to a meal, why, she would take him over the old church, her colonial forefathers'; she would tell him the little legends about them; he was precisely the young man to appreciate such things—and she would be pleased if he would also bring the friends with whom he was travelling.