3 Books To Know Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Edith Wharton

      “That queer-looking duck waving his hand at me like that. Except he's the Sharon girls' uncle I don't know him from Adam.”

      “You don't need to,” she said. “He wasn't waving his hand to you: he meant me.”

      “Oh, he did?” George was not mollified by the explanation. “Everybody seems to mean you! You certainly do seem to've been pretty busy this week you've been here!”

      She pressed her bouquet to her face again, and laughed into it, not displeased. She made no other comment, and for another period neither spoke. Meanwhile the music stopped; loud applause insisted upon its renewal; an encore was danced; there was an interlude of voices; and the changing of partners began.

      “Well,” said George finally, “I must say you don't seem to be much of a prattler. They say it's a great way to get a reputation for being wise, never saying much. Don't you ever talk any?”

      “When people can understand,” she answered.

      He had been looking moodily out at the ballroom but he turned to her quickly, at this, saw that her eyes were sunny and content, over the top of her bouquet; and he consented to smile.

      “Girls are usually pretty fresh!” he said. “They ought to go to a man's college about a year: they'd get taught a few things about freshness! What you got to do after two o'clock to-morrow afternoon?”

      “A whole lot of things. Every minute filled up.”

      “All right,” said George. “The snow's fine for sleighing: I'll come for you in a cutter at ten minutes after two.”

      “I can't possibly go.”

      “If you don't,” he said, “I'm going to sit in the cutter in front of the gate, wherever you're visiting, all afternoon, and if you try to go out with anybody else he's got to whip me before he gets you.” And as she laughed—though she blushed a little, too—he continued, seriously: “If you think I'm not in earnest you're at liberty to make quite a big experiment!”

      She laughed again. “I don't think I've often had so large a compliment as that,” she said, “especially on such short notice—and yet, I don't think I'll go with you.

      “You be ready at ten minutes after two.”

      “No, I won't.”

      “Yes, you will!”

      “Yes,” she said, “I will!” And her partner for the next dance arrived, breathless with searching.

      “Don't forget I've got the third from now,” George called after her.

      “I won't.”

      “And every third one after that.”

      “I know!” she called, over her partner's shoulder, and her voice was amused—but meek.

      When “the third from now” came, George presented himself before her without any greeting, like a brother, or a mannerless old friend. Neither did she greet him, but moved away with him, concluding, as she went, an exchange of badinage with the preceding partner: she had been talkative enough with him, it appeared. In fact, both George and Miss Morgan talked much more to every one else that evening, than to each other; and they said nothing at all at this time. Both looked preoccupied, as they began to dance, and preserved a gravity, of expression to the end of the number. And when “the third one after that” came, they did not dance, but went back to the gallery stairway, seeming to have reached an understanding without any verbal consultation, that this suburb was again the place for them.

      “Well,” said George, coolly, when they were seated, “what did you say your name was?”

      “Morgan.”

      “Funny name!”

      “Everybody else's name always is.”

      “I didn't mean it was really funny,” George explained. “That's just one of my crowd's bits of horsing at college. We always say 'funny name' no matter what it is. I guess we're pretty fresh sometimes; but I knew your name was Morgan because my mother said so downstairs. I meant: what's the rest of it?”

      “Lucy.”

      He was silent.

      “Is 'Lucy' a funny name, too?” she inquired.

      “No. Lucy's very much all right!” he said, and he went so far as to smile. Even his Aunt Fanny admitted that when George smiled “in a certain way” he was charming.

      “Thanks about letting my name be Lucy,” she said.

      “How old are you?” George asked.

      “I don't really know, myself.”

      “What do you mean: you don't really know yourself?”

      “I mean I only know what they tell me. I believe them, of course, but believing isn't really knowing. You believe some certain day is your birthday—at least, I suppose you do—but you don't really know it is because you can't remember.”

      “Look here!” said George. “Do you always talk like this?”

      Miss Lucy Morgan laughed forgivingly, put her young head on one side, like a bird, and responded cheerfully: “I'm willing to learn wisdom. What are you studying in school?”

      “College!”

      “At the university! Yes. What are you studying there?”

      George laughed. “Lot o' useless guff!”

      “Then why don't you study some useful guff?”

      “What do you mean: 'useful'?”

      “Something you'd use later, in your business or profession?”

      George waved his hand impatiently. “I don't expect to go into any 'business or profession.”

      “No?”

      “Certainly not!” George was emphatic, being sincerely annoyed by a suggestion which showed how utterly she failed to comprehend the kind of person he was.

      “Why not?” she asked mildly.

      “Just look at 'em!” he said, almost with bitterness, and he made a gesture presumably intended to indicate the business and professional men now dancing within range of vision. “That's a fine career for a man, isn't it! Lawyers, bankers, politicians! What do they get out of life, I'd like to know! What do they ever know about real things? Where do they ever get?”

      He was so earnest that she was surprised and impressed. Evidently he had deep-seated ambitions, for he seemed to speak with actual emotion of these despised things which were so far beneath his planning for the future. She had a vague, momentary vision of Pitt, at twenty-one, prime minister of England; and she spoke, involuntarily in a lowered voice, with deference:

      “What do you want to be?” she asked.

      George answered promptly.

      “A yachtsman,” he said.

      Chapter VI

      Having thus, in a word, revealed his ambition for a career above courts, marts, and polling booths, George breathed more deeply than usual, and, turning his face from the lovely companion whom he had just made his confidant, gazed out at the dancers with an expression in which there was both sternness and a contempt for the squalid lives of the unyachted Midlanders before him. However, among them, he marked his mother; and his sombre grandeur relaxed momentarily; a more genial light came into his eyes.

      Isabel was dancing with the queer-looking duck; and it was to be noted that the lively gentleman's gait was more sedate than it had been with Miss Fanny Minafer, but not less dexterous and authoritative. He was talking to Isabel as gaily as he had talked to Miss Fanny, though with less laughter, and Isabel listened and