This Side of Glory Read Online Free PDF

neighborhood, Miss Upjohn?” Denis Larne was asking her as he poured the sherry.
    Eleanor recalled her thoughts. “Yes. I live in New Orleans.”
    “New Orleans, yes. I believe I must be acquainted with your family —the name Upjohn sounds familiar to me, though I’m ashamed to say I can’t place it.”
    “You might have heard of my father. He’s the contractor in charge of the new levee just upriver from here.”
    “Possibly that’s it. I hope you like this, Miss Upjohn,” he added, offering her a glass.
    “How pretty it is!” Eleanor exclaimed. She held up the glass to let the firelight dance through it.
    Lysiane smilingly agreed with her. “I’ve often said I shouldn’t care for sherry if I couldn’t see it.” She glanced at Kester, who had returned to his place by the mantel. “Did we get any letters this afternoon, Kester?”
    “Yes ma’am, several from New Orleans. They look like invitations to Carnival balls.”
    “It’s about time we were going back to New Orleans,” Denis remarked at the mention of Carnival.
    Eleanor glanced up in surprise. “Don’t you live here?”
    “Father’s health isn’t of the best,” Kester explained to her, “and he and mother have lived in New Orleans since he gave up managing the plantation several years ago. They only came up to Ardeith for Christmas.”
    “I see. But isn’t it lonely in this big house for you?”
    “Why no,” said Kester, and his mother added,
    “My dear, Kester is either out of the house or has it full of people, all the time. He has a passionate fondness for the human race.”
    “Don’t you like people?” Kester asked Eleanor.
    “Some of them, of course. But not everybody.”
    “Oh, I do,” said Kester. “Clever people are entertaining and stupid ones give me such a pleasant sense of superiority.”
    Lysiane laughed at him, and Kester asked,
    “Where’ve you been all afternoon?”
    Lysiane puckered her pretty little mouth as if her afternoon had not been entirely blissful. “We made several calls, winding up with Sylvia.”
    Denis chuckled. Kester said to Eleanor, “Forgive us. But we have a great many cousins, and some of them are nuisances.”
    “Aren’t everybody’s?” Denis asked with amusement. “Or what do you think, Miss Upjohn?”
    “I’m afraid I can’t answer. I haven’t any.”
    “No cousins?” Kester exclaimed.
    “Neither of my parents had any brothers or sisters.”
    “I’m tempted to call you lucky,” Kester said.
    “I think it’s fun to have a lot of family,” said Eleanor. “I’ve never had to bother about it, because I have five brothers and sisters of my own, but my mother says it’s pretty lonesome to grow up without anybody who belongs to you.”
    “I should think it would be,” Lysiane nodded. “Your mother is quite right. Where did she grow up?—with a remote uncle, or something like that?”
    “No ma’am, in an orphan asylum in New Orleans.”
    “Indeed!” Lysiane exclaimed with such sympathy that Eleanor hastened to add,
    “Oh, it wasn’t as bad as that, Mrs. Larne! Mamma says they were very good to the children.”
    “Those times were so difficult,” Denis said gently. “Everyone was in straits.”
    “Everyone?”
    “Why yes,” said Lysiane. “The carpetbagger days. When I was a little girl, a new dress was such an event!”
    Eleanor thought of the buried coffee service. “It must have been a fantastic period. Kester was saying a little while ago he didn’t believe there was ever any such thing as the good old days.”
    “No,” said Kester, “I’m glad I live now. Aren’t you, Miss Eleanor?”
    “I’ve never thought much about it. But I’m glad I don’t have to wear their clothes. Imagine having to go about in hoops, or a bustle.”
    “I can’t. But neither can I imagine wearing a hobble-skirt.”
    “At least,” she retorted, “I can sit down in a hobble-skirt, and I’ve never understood how anybody ever sat down in a bustle.” Eleanor put her