Short Fiction by O. Henry (librera reader txt) 📕

“I’m not one of that kind, lady,” said the Man from Nome⁠—“honest, I’m not. As I say, I saw you on the street, and I wanted to know you so bad I couldn’t help followin’ after you. I was afraid I wouldn’t ever see you again in this big town unless I spoke; and that’s why I done so.”

Miss Colby looked once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the ferryboat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little of what he had to say.

“You may sit down,” she said, laying her hand over a yawn with ostentatious politness; “and⁠—mind⁠—don’t get fresh or I’ll call the steward.”

The Man from Nome sat by her side. He admired her greatly. He more than admired her. She had exactly the looks he had tried so long in vain to find in a woman. Could she ever come to like him? Well, that was to be seen. He must do all in his power to stake his claim, anyhow.

“My name’s Blayden,” said he⁠—“Henry Blayden.”

“Are you real sure it ain’t Jones?” asked the girl, leaning toward him, with delicious, knowing raillery.

“I’m down from Nome,” he went on with anxious seriousness. “I scraped together a pretty good lot of dust up there, and brought it down with me.”

“Oh, say!” she rippled, pursuing persiflage with engaging lightness, “then you must be on the White Wings force. I thought I’d seen you somewhere.”

“You didn’t see me on the street today when I saw you.”

“I never look at fellows on the street.”

“Well, I looked at you; and I never looked at anything before that I thought was half as pretty.”

“Shall I keep the change?”

“Yes, I reckon so. I reckon you could keep anything I’ve got. I reckon I’m what you would call a rough man, but I could be awful good to anybody I liked. I’ve had a rough time of it up yonder, but I beat the game. Nearly 5,000 ounces of dust was what I cleaned up while I was there.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Miss Colby, obligingly sympathetic. “It must be an awful dirty place, wherever it is.”

And then her eyes closed. The voice of the Man from Nome had a monotony in its very earnestness. Besides, what dull talk was this of brooms and sweeping and dust? She leaned her head back against the wall.

“Miss,” said the Man from Nome, with deeper earnestness and monotony, “I never saw anybody I liked as well as I do you. I know you can’t think that way of me right yet; but can’t you give me a chance? Won’t you let me know you, and see if I can’t make you like me?”

The head of the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s slid over gently and rested upon his shoulder. Sweet sleep had won her, and she was dreaming rapturously of the Wholesale Fish Dealers’ Assistants’ ball.

The gentleman from Nome kept his arms to himself. He did not suspect sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to surrender. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by regarding the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not to be taken advantage of.

One small speck of alloy discounted the gold of his satisfaction. Had he spoken too freely of his wealth? He wanted to be liked for himself.

“I want to say, Miss,” he said, “that you can count on me. They know me in the Klondike from Juneau to Circle City and down the whole length of the Yukon. Many a night I’ve laid in the snow up there where I worked like a slave for three years, and wondered if I’d ever have anybody to like me. I didn’t want all that dust just myself. I thought I’d meet just the right one some time, and I done it today. Money’s a mighty good thing to have, but to have the love of the one you like best is better still. If you was ever to marry a man, Miss, which would you rather he’d have?”

“Cash!”

The word came sharply and loudly from Miss Colby’s lips, giving evidence that in her dreams she was now behind her counter in the great department store of Sieber-Mason.

Her head suddenly bobbed over sideways. She awoke, sat straight, and rubbed her eyes. The Man from Nome was gone.

“Gee! I believe I’ve been asleep,” said Miss Colby “Wonder what became of the White Wings!”

“Eighty-first Street⁠—let ’em out, please,” yelled the shepherd in blue.

A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with the released flock.

John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon of his daily life there was no such word as “perhaps.” There are no surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in a flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy and downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous day.

Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream and butterscotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the