Aurora Dawn Read Online Free PDF

twenty-eight than to a man in his middle forties.
     His clothes, too, were youthful: smartly cut tweeds of a greenish brown mixture, with clipped tie and abbreviated collar of
     self-conscious elegance. He followed Laura into the apartment with an erect, supple gait. Not the least, not the
least
, bit too old for a girl of twenty-tow. … Laura was old for her age, besides. (Thus Mrs. Beaton, to her inner self.)
    “Will you have some sherry wine, Mr. English?” said Mrs. Beaton as they sat down in the living room. “I’m sorry we don’t keep
     whisky. Mr. Beaton was the leading minister of Albuquerque when he was alive, and so we never–” As she paused, the guest said
     affably that sherry was his favorite before-dinner drink. He added, looking around at the neat room, “We really didn’t walk
     in at such a bad time, did we?”
    “Oh, that’s Laura for you,” said Mrs. Beaton. “She’s such a wonderful housekeeper, I never lift a finger. Here she straightened
     the whole place before she left and I never knew. Now don’t you move, dear, I’ll get the wine.” With a radiant smile at her
     peerless daughter, she vanished into the kitchen.
    “So your name is Laura,” said English. “What an immense improvement over Honey! I’ll never call you anything else.”
    “ ‘Honey’ was the Pandar Agency’s invention, not mine,” said Laura.
    “A good one,” said English. “When you’re your own stock in trade, it’s a good idea to have a brand name; but Laura … Laura–”
     As he repeated the syllables he smiled at her.
    The smile tells all to the knowing eye. Palmistry is cant, handwriting analysis is fallible, and dreams give only a vague
     sort of information in Freud’s fashionable revival of Joseph’s art, but the smile is the key to character. Let a man but bare
     his teeth; he bares his soul. Much so-called feminine intuition is a direct, halfconscious estimate based on such subtle clues.
     English’s smile left Laura in the dark. One corner of his mouth moved more than the other, so that while one side of his face
     was lit up with friendly amusement, the other side seemed to be waiting reservedly for the mirth to subside into care. His
     intentions for good or evil, which Laura had often surmised in men, without knowing just how, from a single expression around
     the mouth–these she could not read. A trace of wistfulness she thought she detected was so incongruous with all she knew of
     him that she was inclined to suspect his whole manner of being assumed, but she could not be sure. She found herself looking
     into his eyes and smiling back at him.
    “I like your suit,” she said.
    “Thank you. I like your dress,” answered English with a glance that backed up the remark with much sincerity.
    Mrs. Beaton came brightly into the room, bearing a tray with a bottle of imported sherry, three tapering glasses and a tray
     of crackers. “Well, are you two growing impatient?” she said, setting the tray down on a low table in front of the sofa where
     Laura and her guest were lolling at ease. “Laura, you sit back, I’ll pour.” Laura had not moved, but Mrs. Beaton gave her
     a loving little push and proceeded to fill the glasses. “Heavens, if I left it to her I’d never stir, Mr. English. I suppose
     it’s the Wilson in her. I was that way with my mother. It never occurred to me to do anything but wait hand and foot on her,
     that is, until I married Reverend Beaton. Then he became the whole world, of course. Very old-fashioned, I suppose, but that’s
     what we all are, just old-fashioned folks. Why, when President Wilson stopped at our ranch for three whole days–he did, you
     know, during his second campaign; father and he were first cousins–he was just the same. Plain? ‘Fred,’ he said to my father,
     ‘if I find you putting yourself out I’ll move into a hotel immediately. I want to eat when you eat, sleep when you sleep.
     I’m not the President here, I’m just one