Instead of the Thorn: A Novel

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Instead of the Thorn, by Clara Louise Burnham
A Novel
Clara Louise Burnham
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published April 1916
TO C.T.R. WITH LOVING AND GRATEFUL MEMORIES OF JOCKEY HILL
AT THE SOUTH SHORE
On a June evening, Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe were entertaining their New York friends the Lindsays at dinner at the South Shore Club. The dining-room, with its spacious semicircle of glass, is a place where Chicago may entertain New York with complacence, for the windows give upon Lake Michigan, whose billows break so close to the border of velvety grass that the effect is of dining on a yacht.
The Lindsays were enamored of the great marine view, lovely in the long June evening, and with many an admiring comment watched the white gulls hover and wheel above the sunset water.
Mrs. Radcliffe was a stout, white-haired woman, costumed with disregard of expense, and she habitually wore an expression of countenance which betokened general optimism.
Mrs. Lindsay, of about her friend's age, was spare and lined of face, offering a contrast to the hostess's plump smoothness. She again raised a jeweled lorgnette to watch the wheeling gulls.