He was the
kind of person you LIKE to meet on the street; whose cheerful passing
sends you on feeling indefinably a little gayer than you did. He was
tall, thin--even gaunt, perhaps--and his face was long, rather pale, and
shrewd and gentle; something in its oddity not unremindful of the late
Sol Smith Russell. His hat was tilted back a little, the slightest bit
to one side, and the sparse, brownish hair above his high forehead was
going to be gray before long. He looked about forty.
The truth is, I had expected to see a cousin german to Don Quixote; I
had thought to detect signs and gleams of wildness, however
slight--something a little "off." One glance of that kindly and humorous
eye told me such expectation had been nonsense. Odd he might have
been--Gadzooks! he looked it--but "queer"? Never. The fact that Miss
Apperthwaite could picture such a man as this "sitting and sitting and
sitting" himself into any form of mania or madness whatever spoke loudly
of her own imagination, indeed! The key to "Simpledoria" was to be
sought under some other mat.
... As I began to know some of my co-laborers on the "Despatch," and to
pick up acquaintances, here and there, about town, I sometimes made Mr.
Beasley the subject of inquiry. Everybody knew him. "Oh yes, I know Dave
BEASLEY!" would come the reply, nearly always with a chuckling sort of
laugh. I gathered that he had a name for "easy-going" which amounted to
eccentricity.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30