“Speakin’ o’ the devil, Lu,” he said, as he moved to the door—“yes, sir, them two chuldern, Maud and Bill, have perty much got our whole little city buffaloed! They’s quite some talk goin’ on about the brain work you been showin’ Lu. I expect your reputation never did stand no higher in that line than what it does right to-day. I shouldn’t wonder it’d bring you a good deal extry law-practice, Lu: Mrs. Rolfo Williams says she always did know you were the smartest man in this town!”
“Now what are you talking about?” Lucius demanded sharply, but he was growing red to the ears, and over them.
“Goin’ out o’ town,” said Mortimer admiringly. “Keepin’ out the way o’ them chuldern and lettin’ other fellers take the brunt of ’em. Yes, sir; there isn’t a soul raises the question but what their mother is the finest-lookin’ lady that ever lived here, or but what she does every last thing any mortal could do in the line o’ disciplinn; but much as everybody’d enjoy to git better acquainted with her and begin to see somep’n of her, they all think she’s liable to lead kind of a lonesome life in our community unless—” Mortimer paused with his hand upon the door-knob—“unless somep’n happens to Maud and Bill!”
He departed languidly, his farewell coming back from the stairway: “So long, Lu!”
But the blush that had extended to include Mr. Allen’s ears, at the sound of so much praise of himself, did not vanish with the caller; it lingered and for a time grew even deeper. When it was gone, and its victim restored to his accustomed moderate pink, he pushed aside his work and went to a locked recess beneath his book-shelves. Therefrom he took the blue parasol, and a small volume in everything dissimilar to the heavy, calf-bound legal works that concealed all the walls of the room; and, returning to his swivel-chair, placed the parasol gently upon the desk. Then, allowing his left hand to remain lightly upon the parasol, he held the little book in his right and read musingly.
He read, thus, for a long time—in fact, until the setting in of twilight; and, whatever the slight shiftings of his position, he always kept one hand in light contact with the parasol. Some portions of the book he read over and over, though all of it was long since familiar to him; and there was one part of it in which his interest seemed quite unappeasable. Again and again he turned back to the same page; but at last, as the room had grown darker, and his eye-glasses tired him, he let the book rest in his lap, took off the glasses and used them to beat time to the rhythm of the cadences, as he murmured, half-aloud:
“The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes.
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.