"All we'd have
to do would be to paint these wooden walls a nice cheerful light
color, change one room into a smoker, another into a billiard-room,
and a third into a grill, add some gun-racks and leather
wing-chairs, and we'd be right up to the minute in club-houses!"
When I explained that I couldn't sell he offered to compromise on
two of the carved marble mantels, the library tiles, and two inlaid
tables, "at double what you'd get from anybody else." And when I
wouldn't even let him have these trifles, he was disgusted and took
no pains to conceal it. He was rude to Alicia, who snubbed him with
terrible thoroughness, a proceeding which made him call loudly for
his "bill" and his car. The last we heard of him was his bullying
voice bawling at his sullen chauffeur.
"That pig," said The Author to me, with fury, "is undoubtedly the
lineal descendant of the one Gadarene swine that hadn't decency
enough to rush down the slope with the rest of the herd and drown
himself."
Busy as I was, it wasn't over easy for me to find time to revisit
that brown and sweet-smelling spot in the Forest of Arden where on a
gray afternoon, I had met Nicholas Jelnik and received from him a
kiss on the palm, and a broken coin.
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