Miss Dividends: A Novel

NEW YORK THE HOME PUBLISHING COMPANY 3 East Fourteenth Street 1892
Copyright, 1892, By A. C. GUNTER.
All rights reserved.
Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York
Five minutes behind your appointment, remarks Mr. Whitehouse Southmead in kindly severity; then he laughs and continues: You see, your oysters are cold.
As they should be, covered up with ice, returns Captain Harry Storey Lawrence. A moment after, however, he adds more seriously, I had a good excuse.
An excuse for keeping this waiting? And Whitehouse pours out lovingly a glass of Château Yquem.
Yes, and the best in the world, though probably not one that would be considered good by a lawyer.
Aha! a woman? rejoins Mr. Southmead.
The most beautiful I have ever seen! cries Lawrence, the enthusiasm of youth beaming in his handsome dark eyes.
Pooh! returns the other, you have only been from the Far West for three days.
True, remarks Lawrence. Three days ago I was incompetent, but am not now. You see, I have been living in a mining camp in Southern Utah for the last year, where all women are scarce and none beautiful. For my first three days in New York, every woman I met on the streets seemed to me a houri. Now, however, I am beginning to discriminate. My taste has become normal, and I pronounce the young lady whose fan I picked up on the stairs a few moments ago, just what I have called her. Wouldn't you, if she had eyes——