She had smiled and had not seemed to
mind very much his going--not half as much as a hen mother minds its
duckling's first dash into water. And yet her eyes--There are some
things it hurts and at the same time warms your heart to think of at
the other end of the world.
Peter had gone up the White Nile to shoot big game; but when he met it
face to face, on a social equality, so to speak, he wondered how he
could ever have harboured so monstrously caddish a design. He found
the animals he had thought he wanted to kill so much handsomer and
more important than himself that he felt like begging the alleged
"game's" pardon for calling on it without invitation in its country
home (as if he'd been a book agent), and bowed himself away with only
a few photographs to remember it by. While Ena was working up
conversations to the point of mentioning "my brother, who is such a
great shot, you know, and is shooting big game in Africa," Peter's
only shots were snapshots, and he was too stupidly conscientious to
atone for his weakness by obtaining elephant tusks and lion skins with
coins instead of bullets.
He wished he had saved Egypt and its temples for his honeymoon, in
case he should ever find exactly the right girl, for the mystery and
wonder made him sad because he had nobody to feel it with him.
Pages:
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179