The unpretenders

“I think it was Gladys-Marie’s hat.” Doromea struggled back of plot to remember. “It had a look of Gladys-Marie--an incoherent sort of cloche, you know, that was meant to have b...

The stepmother looked at Patsy’s lovely rebellious little head. Then she looked at the ridiculous scrap of a frock she was making. “I suppose he thought of the Angel,” she murmu...

And as Patsy flew across the aisle, he deliberately turned his back and bent his glasses once more on engagement rings. “So foolish to let oneself fear that a Plain Story won’t...

“Yes--that is, they were going to motor out to the Claremont, to try Hawley’s new machine--how is it that society people _always_ have a new machine?--and then to look at some p...

“Oh, of course!” Knollys shook his shoulders impatiently. “His stories always are funny. He’s always funny. He can’t help being funny. But great Heavens, Hawley, he _can_ help b...

“Aren’t you glad, then?” asked Chalmers gently. He had sat down opposite her, by the fire. Patsy admitted again that he was _almost_ as handsome as Warren. Too bad he never _did...

“If that is so,”--as a philanthropist, Pix had learned, he modestly confessed it, to avoid a request of something he knew he wasn’t going to do--“if you like anything that is co...

“And you confess he is marvelously handsome,” urged the little old Lady-in-Waiting slyly, “you acknowledge yourself, Ermyntrude, that he fills his position with distinction; nev...

Mrs. Loring--whose intimacy with mathematics was fleeting--looked at her daughter anxiously. “Just what do you mean, Lucy? There, my dear--throw your coat off. And your hat--so!...

“Then--I am serving them, I and Little-John--all of a sudden something happens. Something is said--I am out, searching their dessert, I do not hear. But Little-John hears, and h...

“Every one of the sketches is clever, humorous, but never unkind. An analytical gift of character reading is one of the salient attributes of Mr. Leacock’s style, and his presen...