Page:The Smart Set (Volume 52, Number 4).djvu/8

seen in imagination these hands of his enclose in their own the tinier ones of some beautiful woman of rank and fashion m the world to which he had no right of entry. Forty years of bottle opening industries would make them gnarled and horrible. He could only contemplate such a disaster by assuring himself that if it were to come he would wear gloves night and day.

“I'm not built for that sort of work,” he card at length. His aunt had a neat little property and she must not be wounded ; also he rather liked her.

“What work are you built for?” she demanded.

“I will think 1t over and let you know,” he said seriously.

“That’s your father all over,” she grumbled. “That man might have owned this town if he'd had a mind to.” She snorted. “He used to collect flow- ers and ferns and went chasing butter- flies and bugs on Sunday when the others were i Sunday school”

He looked at her with enthusiasm. So far he had only heard that his father was a failure from a busmess point of view. This was his progenitor in a wholly new light. HHe saw in him one who had also rebelled at the narrow circle. His aunt disapproved of the sudden light on interest.

“Chasing butterflies on Sunday afternoons!” she sneered. I suppose you feel you'd like to do that?”

“I should like to chase them back to the rainbow from where they came, he said extravagantly.

In the end Horace chose, since he must obev his aunt, to become a book- keeper. For five years he labored at this devitalizing work, and had the span of life permitted him to toil at 1t for five hundred vears his skill would never have brought him to owning a factory.

But during those five years he had learned something of the life for which he longed. A girl from the co-educa- tional college he had attended taught him much. She had been a governess in a wealthy household and assured him that knightly manners and stately graces belonged to a day that was dead.

“You've got to be a man of the world,” said this apient maid. “*Peo- ple don’'t write verses to ther lovers any more: they tane them to Tiffany’s amd et them prek out what they want.

“And.” she conttnued a trifle vaguely, “you've got to have charge accounts evervwhere”

The little book of verse that Horace had hoped some day to be a stepping stone to cherished love was laid aside reluctantly but msrantly. Some of the stanzas had merit but most had not, so the world was hittle the poorer. His new ambition was to be a man of the world. Others have wrecked them- selves in such attempts, but there was a streak of caution inherited either from his mother or acquired in the bookkeeping department of his factory.

He kept this ambition to himself, but went twice a week to Buffalo and patronmized the spoken drama. Men of the world alwavs dil this, he knew. And there was the need, wo, for him to understand the ordering of a dinner and the names of wines and liqueurs. Park and Mecerril's catalogues helped him with the wines, but Buffalo was a poor guide to one who sought knowl- cedge of the gastronomic arts.

e Horton, the governess with ideas on modern socicty and the newer chivalry, was a great aid to him at first in shaping his nchulous ambitions. She was a pretty girl, her figure was svelte and charming, and he called to mind certain evenings of June, now three years gone by, when he had kissed her with all the relish that first love creates. There was a warmth, too, in her hair and caresses that many of his fellows would have appreciated more than he. She was the only girl whom he had kissed since he was emancipated from the stupid kissing-games of his childhood parties.

Effic Horton was cngaged for the moment in endeavoring to aid two daughters of a Buffalo banker to pass their entrance examinations to a fash- ionable college. She met Horace often in Delaware Park near her employer’s residence, and told him of her life in