Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill T ATER that evening, Lorimer, immo- -L' lated on an altar which he himself had helped to rear, approached Clem Merrit, and took her card from her. "You remember me," he asserted humbly. "You told me my fortune a week ago, which was altogether clever. Your recognition of me this afternoon makes me bold enough to dare this throng surging about you, and that without delay. I am taking the ninth." "Everything in sight, that is," said Clem Merrit gaily. "No, I was n't saving it up, not for anybody, unless it was Reggie, and he 's got his share, / think." Lorimer scribbled his name with a smile. He thought that he would like to try the interesting experiment of putting a book of purest English prose into Miss Merrit's hands, and beseeching her to read therefrom. He wondered if she might not make Addison and De Quincey, in their most exalted and sonorous moments, read like modern slang. It was not always her words which put the flavor of cant into her phrasings, although her speech was plentifully besprinkled with the paprika-like zest of colloquialisms. The more he listened to her, the more definite his feeling grew that it was the girl's intonations which made her manner of speech distinctively her own. "The boy is fortunate," he said, not without intention, as he returned her card. "Yes," agreed the girl. "He 's got just about every other one, and then some. Yes, I remember you. I 've seen you all over the place lately. You 're a great friend of the Wineses, are n't you? I know lots of people here that way, by sight. You forever meet people here that way, till you know them like your grandmother's picture, and then, when you do the decent thing and speak—" She drew her bare shoulders together and shivered exaggeratedly. "But you 're not thatsort," she added. "Not...