The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 190: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ATIE, had never been more sur- prised in her life than when the serious young man with the brown eyes and the Charles Dana Gib- son profile spirited her away from his friend and Genevieve. Till that moment she had looked on herself as playing a sort of “ villager and retainer’’ part to the brown-eyed young man’s hero and Genevieve’s heroine. Etiquette had kept the four of them together on the way up; but once Pali- sades Park was reached, she had imagined Genevieve would stroll off with her latest conquest, leaving her to amuse and entertain the latter's ex- traordinarily ugly friend. It had always happened that way on her previous expeditions with Gene- vieve, and Katie had come to accept her minor role as a matter of course. She knew she was not pretty, though somebody (unidentified) had once said that she had nice eyes; whereas Gene- vieve was notoriously a regular beauty, incessantly pestered, so report had it, by musical comedy managers to go on the stage. Genevieve was tall and blond, a destroyer of masculine peace of mind. She had the haughty look, the nodding pompadour, the languid smile. 660 by P. G. Wodehouse She said ‘‘harf” and “ rahther,”’ and might easily have been taken for an English duchess instead of a cloak- model at Macy’s. You would have said, in short, that, in the matter of person- able young men, Genevieve would have swept the board. Yet, here was this one deliberately selecting her, Katie, for his companion. It was almost a ~ miracle. He had managed it with the utmost dexterity at the merry-go-round. With winning politeness he had seated Gene- vieve on her wooden steed, and then, as the machinery began to work, had grasped Katie’s arm and led her at a rapid walk out into the sunlight. Katie’s last glimpse of Genevieve had been the sight of her amazed and offended face as it whizzed round the corner, while the steam melodeon drowned protests with a_ spirited plunge into “ Alexander’s Rag - time Band.” Katie felt shy. This young man was a perfect stranger. It was true she had had a formal introduction to him, but only from Genevieve, who had scraped acquaintance with him exactly two min- ‘utes previously. It had happened on the ferry-boat on the way to the Palisades. Genevieve’s bright eve, roving among the throng on COIN Ghooks CO@