Idyls in Drab Author:William Dean Howells 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: n THE train, which had started long before, advanced by smooth leaps through the dark, and the rhythmical clangour of the wheels upon the rails lost itself in... more » Lorenzo's tones while he talked on and mapped out the future to Althea. Already, though he had been so few days in the world-outside, he knew many things unknown to her, and he looked at everything from a point of view that she could not yet imagine. He used words that she had never heard before, and he used familiar phrases in a new sense. He spoke low, and not to lose anything he said she had to turn her deep bonnet towards him, and peer up into his face with eyes so still and solemn in their fixity that at last he laughed out. "What are you laughing at?" she half grieved. " Oh, nothing. Your eyes down there in that old bonnet made me think of a rabbit that I got into a hole once, and it keptlooking up at me. What is there to scare anybody, anyway, Althea ? " "Nothing. I'm not soared now." "Well, I believe it's that bonnet, after all. Why don't you take the old thing off ? " " I don't know. They would look." She glanced round the car at their fellow- passengers, and Lorenzo did so too. "Well, let them look !" he said, with a petulant impulse ; and then, as if he had given way too far, he added, "They've all got their backs turned, anyway." " So they have ! " said Althea. " I took this seat at the end of the car on purpose, so they wouldn't notice me so much. I forgot about that." Still she did not offer to remove her bonnet, and he repeated, " Why don't you take the old thing off?" " Do you truly want me to ? " " Yee ; I want to see how you 'll look." " Why, you know already how I look with my cap on." " Got that on too ? " "Yee." " Oh, what 'a the use of yeeing and naying it al...« less