“You don't want me to be hackneyed? Well, I'll be perfectly original. I know one thing I can say which will always sound mysterious and marvellous!”
“Say it, say it!” she commanded, imperiously, knowing quite well what it was.
So he said it, and the two sat and looked off across the darkened water and at the pale, reluctant stars, beholding, for that night at least, the passionate inner sense of the universe. They said nothing more.
But as for the liner, it continued with its emphatic reiteration.
THE MINISTER
ANNIE HAMILTON DONNELL
Mrs. Leah Bloodgood walked heavily, without the painstaking little springy leaps she usually adopted as an offset to her stoutness. She mounted Cornelia Opp's door-steps with an air of gloomy abstraction that sat uneasily on the plump terraces of her face as if at any moment it might slide off. It slid off now at sight of Cornelia Opp's serene, sweet face.
“My gracious! Cornelia, is this your house?” laughed Mrs. Bloodgood, pantingly. “Here I thought I was going up Marilla Merritt's steps! You don't mean to tell me that I turned into Ridgway Street instead of Penn?”
“This isn't Penn Street,” smiled Cornelia Opp. She had flung the door wide with a gesture of welcome.