Читать книгу Hard-Pan. A Story of Bonanza Fortunes онлайн

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In the absorption of his recollections the colonel crossed his knees, bringing one foot, with a torn slipper dropping from the heel, into a position of prominence.

“Oh, those were days worth living in!” he said, running a long, spare hand through his hair—“great days! Men that weren’t grown then don’t know what life is. I meet Jerry sometimes, but we don’t talk much about old times. He knows that he owes everything to me, and it goes against the grain for him to acknowledge it. I hear his daughters are handsome girls.”

“Perhaps—I don’t know,” said Gault, recalling the occasions when he had sat next to the Miss McCormicks at dinners, and suffered exceedingly in the effort known as “making conversation.”

“I heard that they were fine, handsome girls, large, and with black hair like their mother. She was a beauty in her day—a hot-tempered Irish girl that Jerry married from the wash-tub. The youngest daughter is about Viola’s age—twenty-three.”

John Gault turned and looked at Viola with some surprise.