'
"Miss Ringtop, who must have suspected the new relation between
Eunice and myself, was for the most part rigidly silent. If she
quoted, it was from the darkest and dreariest utterances of her
favorite Gamaliel.
"What happened after our departure I learned from Perkins, on the
return of the Shelldrakes to Norridgeport, in September. Mrs.
Shelldrake stoutly persisted in refusing to make Hollins's bed, or
to wash his shirts. Her brain was dull, to be sure; but she was
therefore all the more stubborn in her resentment. He bore this
state of things for about a week, when his engagements to lecture
in Ohio suddenly called him away. Abel and Miss Ringtop were left
to wander about the promontory in company, and to exchange
lamentations on the hollowness of human hopes or the pleasures of
despair. Whether it was owing to that attraction of sex which
would make any man and any woman, thrown together on a desert
island, finally become mates, or whether she skilfully ministered
to Abel's sentimental vanity, I will not undertake to decide: but
the fact is, they were actually betrothed, on leaving Arcadia.
Pages:
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324