Page:Spider Boy (1928).pdf/297

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Eighteen

The honeymoon began in one of the large hotels at Santa Barbara and Ambrose speedily discovered that he knew nothing whatever about servants. The wholesale manner in which Georgiana ordered them about, got what she wanted, and a lot more than she had asked for, fascinated him, but he was not up to emulating her example. He just couldn't do it. He remembered that when he was a boy visiting his aunt on the Chicago West Side he had been accustomed to carry a heavy suit-case, usually full of books, from the station to the street-car. Were there no porters in those days? Surely he might have afforded the extra dime. Once, only once, in his old village, he had escorted a girl to a dance—he was about seventeen at the time—without engaging a carriage. The night was bitter cold and the girl had frozen her ears. Somebody should have told him, instructed him, as Georgiana was now instructing him.

If Georgiana ordered the servants about a good deal, it is probable that she ordered Ambrose about still more, but he discovered, to his stupefaction, that he liked to be ordered about. It gave him immense