John Cave

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII John's bedroom, on the fifth floor of an apartment house, fronted a fashionable street, and from his window he often studied a girl across the way. Sometimes, with an elderly woman, she came forth to drive in the Park. Her departure made a stately and splendid picture. On the box of the glittering victoria, restraining easily his restive horses, the coachman sat erect and still. The footman stood by the curbstone, a folded laprobe on his arm. The butler opened the huge doors; the two women entered the victoria modestly; and John, from his lofty window, peered down with admiration and awe. Sometimes the girl came forth to walk, dressed trimly, like a boy, in rough cloth, and holding irt leash a Russian deerhound. In the evening, descending the marble stairs in the clear twilight, she was like a fairy princess in her pale splendour. Then she was clad from head to foot in white. She wore a long white cloak. There were white flowers in her yellow hair. From his window John admired her, and one day, as she was entering her brougham, he thought her eyelids fluttered, and her dark blue eyes met his. Of this, however, he could not be sure. He had good work to do now on The Press. He reported murder trials and the launching of great ships; he interviewed statesmen, poets, princes, all the pity's distinguished visitors; and nearly every morning he had a column of matter on the front page. To his salary, moreover, five dollars had been added. His demeanour in the office changed with success. Diffidence, in the beginning, had caused him to appear a quiet and modest youth, a sympathetic, appreciative youth, and the reporters had liked him in a condescending way, feeling indulgently that here was one who realised, who even perhaps...