This Side of Glory Read Online Free PDF Page B

glass on the tray. “Mrs. Larne, it’s very pleasant being here, but I simply must go.”
    Lysiane graciously asked her to stay for supper, but Eleanor shook her head. They made their farewells, and Eleanor and Kester went back to his car. As they drove toward the camp they did not talk much, but at length Kester said, “May I come back to see you tomorrow?”
    “That’s very soon.”
    “Not too soon,” said Kester. “I’ve been waiting years to meet a girl who could spend a whole afternoon without tucking her hand under her belt to see if her shirtwaist and skirt were coming apart. Tomorrow?”
    She laughed. “All right. About three. I’ll be working until then.”
    “I’ll be there at three.”
    He stopped the car by the levee and walked with her to the main tent. “Gee, I like you!” he exclaimed, and strode back across the levee, whistling the Horseshoe Rag like a young man well pleased with the world.

Chapter Two
    1
    A fter that Eleanor and Kester saw each other nearly every day. Conscientiously, Eleanor forbade him to call until afternoon, but for the first time since she had been her father’s secretary she found herself watching the clock. Until now she had liked her work and had gone out in the afternoon merely for rest and exercise, but suddenly the morning was only a dreary prelude to the golden hours when she would be with Kester, and even before he came her awareness of him was distracting.
    She really tried to keep her thoughts away from Kester while she was at work. But as the days went by she found it increasingly hard to do so. In the midst of a statement to the Mississippi River Commission some gay remark of his would pop into her head and twenty minutes later she would discover her fingers still idle on the keys. She would jerk herself back, but her smooth typing turned into a chaos of wrong letters and dollar marks, and she could almost hear Kester laughing at her exasperation as she tore out the sheet and started over. Once she called Randa to bring her a cup of coffee, and Randa came in, her bediamonded teeth gleaming as she inquired, “You got a headache, Miss Elna?”
    “No,” said Eleanor, “but I think I’m losing my mind.”
    Randa gave her a flashing grin. “Yo’ mind done gone kitin’ over to dat plantation.”
    “Don’t be an idiot,” said Eleanor shortly.
    Arms akimbo, Randa surveyed her. “Ah, go on, Miss Elna. You’s just befo’ fallin’ in love wid dat gemman.”
    Eleanor sipped her coffee and did not answer.
    “He’s a mighty highclass gemman,” Randa went on. “Give me fifty cents mighty near every time he come over. But you take care of yo’sef, Miss Elna. He’s the sparkin’ kind.”
    “Will you press my dotted shirtwaist?” Eleanor asked. “I want to wear it this afternoon.”
    “Yassum.” Randa went off, shaking her head and mumbling like an oracle. Eleanor looked after her. The sparking kind. Randa doubtless knew what she was talking about. Eleanor had observed before now that Negroes knew a great deal more about white people than white people knew about Negroes. Setting down her cup so hard it rattled in the saucer, she turned resolutely back to her desk. Kester was none of Randa’s business.
    Fred was good-natured when he and Kester met, but Fred’s contempt for what he called the mildewed aristocracy of the plantations was too profound for him to have much approval of any specimen of that class, and Kester’s blithe assumption that the world had been created only for pleasure would not in any case have won Fred’s esteem. But except for occasional comments on her incomprehensible taste, Fred said very little to Eleanor about him, for he was too busy to pay much attention to anything but his levee. Eleanor was not troubled by her father’s opinion of Kester—she was, in fact, hardly conscious of it. She was conscious of very little except her own sudden happiness.
    She did not try to analyze it. She only knew that when she saw Kester