Читать онлайн «The story of a Dildoe»
Автор Anonymous
Anonymous
The story of a Dildoe
TABLEAU I
Madison Square is a fashionable locality in New York, attractive in its architecture, its position and its inhabitants-well to do merchants, cotton brokers, railway contractors and bankers lived there, and there their fashionable wives and daughters gave receptions, and held parties that were the talk of New York society. The belle of Madison Square was Flore McPherson. She has been celebrated in song, for it was " Flora McPherson of Madison Square that made three separate journeys to Paris" in search of novelties when she had " nothing to wear "-that is, nothing that was not perfectly fresh within the last fortnight. But this history deals with events in the life of Flora before she made the celebrated journey spoken of.
As yet she was but seventeen-plump, fair, rosy, with a wonderful fund of spirits, quick at repartee, and altogether what the Yankees call a " smart gal. "
Flora's father was from a Scotch family, and the acuteness he inherited had enabled him to take advantage of numerous lucky chances in the way of railway work, the result of the combined skill and luck being-a fortune.
Flora was his only child. Her mother, a woman devoted to fashion and not companionable to him, so that Flora was indeed her dad's idol, and all that money could purchase her she had. Her private purse was always well replenished, and she was in many respects a girl to be envied.
Of course a young lady with such considerable personal attractions and with such an ample stock of dollars in prospective was not without admirers, but as yet no aspiring young gentleman had made any impression upon her.
She was heart-whole, and though fond of society, at every gathering she seemed to take more pleasure in the society of her young lady friends than in that of any gentleman who hung over her chair and poured his vapid small talk into her eаг.Her two close companions were Laura Addison and Maud Tromp.
Laura was the youngest daughter of a cotton broker, a charming girl about Flora's age, but dark, warm and impulsive, a good heart and a genial temper, and with Southern blood in her veins that made her passionate and daring.
Maud was of a German family, quiet, subdued, lymphatic, dreamy and poetical; but her quiet eyes shewed a nature you could put firm trust in, and anybody who secured the affection of Maud Tromp would have a friend steadfast and true.
Maud was older than the other two, and was " engaged," but her lover held an important position in a mercantile house, and was now in Europe for a year or two on business, so that for consolation during his absence Maud was much in the society of the two girls.
It was a quiet autumn evening when the three sat together in Flora's boudoir. They had not been discussing Shakespeare and the musical glasses, but a theme more interesting to all women-Love.
Flora and Laura had been congratulating Maud on the approaching return af her fiancee, to be fol lowed soon by her marriage-a prospect that poor timid Maud seemed to dread.
