The Reverberator Read Online Free PDF

out with a brilliant young man only deepened the pleasant calm. That belonged to their superior life, and Mr. Dosson never doubted that George M. Flack was brilliant. He represented the newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial assumptions represented Mind—it was the great shining presence of our time. To know that Delia and Francie were out with an editor or a correspondent was really to see them dancing in the central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. Dosson had slightly more than usual his air of recovering slowly from a pleasant surprise. The vision to which I allude hung before him, at a convenient distance, and melted into other bright confused aspects: reminiscences of Mr. Flack in other relations—on the ship, on the deck, at the hotel at Liverpool, and in the cars. Whitney Dosson was a loyal father, but he would have thought himself simple had he not had two or three strong convictions: one of which was that thechildren should never go out with a gentleman they had not seen before. The sense of their having, and his having, seen Mr. Flack before was comfortable to him now: it made it mere placidity for him personally to forego the young man’s society in favour of Delia and Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly satisfied that the streets and shops, the general immensity of Paris, were just the right place for young ladies alone. But the company of a pleasant gentleman made them right—a gentleman who was pleasant through being up to everything, as one connected with that paper (he remembered its name now, it was celebrated) would have to be. To Mr. Dosson, in the absence of such happy accidents, his girls somehow seemed lonely; which was not the way he struck himself. They were his company but he was scarcely theirs; it was as if he had them more than they had him.
    They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected that Mr. Flack’s very profession was a prevision of everything that could possibly happen. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing them back, but Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court, till he might have been taken for a
valet de place
hoping to pick up custom. The landlady smiled at him sometimes, as she passed and re-passed, and even ventured to remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day indoors—not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr. Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was confronted with historical monuments, or beauties of nature or art, which he didn’t understand nor care for: then he felt a little ashamed and uncomfortable—but never when he lounged in that simplifying way in the court. It wanted but a quarter of anhour to dinner (that he could understand) when Delia and Francie at last met his view, still accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance from each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to his possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other, with a mixture of sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had seen and done—a question into which he felt as yet a delicacy as to inquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good time: an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the consciousness of failure.
    “Won’t you just step in and take dinner with us?” he asked of the young man, with a friendliness begotten of the circumstances.
    “Well, that’s a handsome offer,” George Flack replied, while Delia remarked that they had each eaten about thirty cakes.
    “Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind your cakes. It’s twenty minutes past six, and the
table d’hôte
is on time.”
    “You don’t mean to say you dine at the
table d’hôte
!” Mr. Flack ejaculated.
    “Why, don’t you like that?” Francie drawled sweetly.
    “Well, it isn’t what you most build on when you come to Paris. Too many flower-pots and