FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122  
123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   >>   >|  
hands a bit and dream of the future, and the nurse had appeared from a misty somewhere and stood beside him. "I wouldn't be discouraged, Mr. Weldon," she had said kindly. "Your case is not so uncommon--really. He has cured much worse." "You're very kind, Miss--Miss Jessop," he had answered gratefully (her rich, brown colouring was so restful, her hand on his shoulder so firm and deftly powerful). He had thought of her all the way home. Now, curiously enough, perhaps because the president's desk was placed in the same position as Dr. Stanchon's desk had been, he thought of her again, irrelevantly. That was the trouble--not to be irrelevant! The president's careless glance conveyed just such a tinge of critical surprise as the occasion called for: he toyed with a slender tortoise-shell paper-cutter. The pendulum of the sombre, costly grandfather clock behind him swung tolerantly, silently; the murmur of the bank beyond them was utterly lost behind the heavy double doors and forgotten behind the bronze velvet curtains. The president's voice sounded on--he seemed to Weldon to have been uttering pompous platitudes since time began. His voice was as meaningless as a cardboard mask: how could people pay attention to him? Weldon wondered irritably. "...Nor has it ever been my policy to render myself inaccessible to my--my corps of assistants. No. Not in the slightest degree. Our interests..." Here Weldon's mind slipped softly from its moorings and drifted off on seas that soon grew tropic: should it be Bermuda, after all? Oleanders and a turquoise bay--what a relief to pavement-gritted eyes! "Nevertheless, trivial, inconsequent interviews between one in my position and those of my--my corps of assistants who may so far forget themselves as to seek them, must always be deplored. They tend only to weaken..." And yet this man had a reputation for cleverness--nay, it was no empty reputation. Did not Weldon know what he could do, know better than any living man? And yet, how he babbled! Hark, here was his own name. "You inform me, Mr. Weldon, that you have been ten years in the employ of the bank, a gratifying but by no means unusual record. Our cashier, you know, is now in his twenty-third year, if I am not mistaken. Yes. Was it to inform me of this only that you requested this interview?" "No," said Weldon wearily, for the president's voice hit like a dull hammer on his ear. "No, it was
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122  
123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Weldon

 

president

 

reputation

 
position
 
thought
 

inform

 
assistants
 

interviews

 

pavement

 

relief


forget
 

trivial

 

Nevertheless

 

gritted

 

inconsequent

 
tropic
 

slipped

 

softly

 

interests

 
degree

inaccessible

 
slightest
 

moorings

 

drifted

 

Bermuda

 

Oleanders

 

turquoise

 
future
 

cashier

 

twenty


record

 

unusual

 

gratifying

 

hammer

 

wearily

 

interview

 

mistaken

 

requested

 

employ

 

cleverness


weaken

 

deplored

 

babbled

 

living

 

people

 

wouldn

 
Stanchon
 

discouraged

 

curiously

 

irrelevantly