Stover at Yale by Owen Johnson

Author:Owen Johnson [Johnson, Owen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DigiCat
Published: 2022-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

And around he did go, not once, but several times. The first little antagonism between them gradually wore away, and yet he was aware of a certain defensive attitude in her, a judgment that was reserved; and as, by the perfected averaging system of college, he had lost in one short year all the originality and imagination he had brought with him, he was quite at a loss to understand what she found lacking in so important and successful a personage as Mr. John Humperdink Stover.

Naturally, he felt that he was in love. This extraordinary passion came to him in the most sudden and convincing manner. He corresponded, with much physical and mental agony, with what is called a dashing brunette, with whom he had danced eleven dances out of a possible sixteen on the occasion of a house-party in the Christmas vacation, on the strength of which they had exchanged photographs and simulated a confidential correspondence. He had done this because he had plainly perceived it was the thing for a man to do, as one watches the crease in the trousers or exposes a vest a little more daring than the rest. It gave him a sort of reputation among lady-killers that was not distasteful. At Easter he had annexed a blonde, who wrote effusive rolling scrawls and used a noticeable crest. He had done this, likewise, because he wished to be known as a destructive force, as one who rather allowed himself to be loved. But he found the manual labor too taxing. He was cruel and abrupt to the blonde, but he consoled himself by saying to himself that he had restored to the little girl her peace of mind.

On Sunday evening, then, according to tacit agreement, after a pipe had been smoked and the fifth Sunday newspaper had been searched for the third time, McCarthy stretched himself like a cat and said:

"Well, I guess I'll dash off a few heart-throbs to the dear little things."

"That reminds me," said Stover, with an obvious loudness. He took out the last heliotrope envelop and read over the contents which had pleased him so much on the preceding Tuesday. Somehow, it had a different ring—a little too flippant, too facile.

"What the deuce am I going to write her?" he said, inciting his hair to rebellion. He cleaned the pen, and then the ink-well, and wrote on the envelop:

Miss Anita Laurence

It was a name that had particularly attracted him, it was so Spanish and suggestive of serenades. He wrote again at the top of the page:

"Dear Anita."

Then he stopped.

"What the deuce can I say now?" he repeated crossly.

"By George, I've only seen her five times. What is there to say?"

He rose, went to his bureau, and took up the photograph of honor and looked at it long. It was a pretty face, but the ears were rather large. Then he went back, and, tearing up what he had written, closed his desk.

"Hello," said McCarthy, who was in difficulties. "Aren't you going to write Anita?"

"I wrote her last night," said Stover with justifiable mendacity.

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