No one but herself (and her father,
though Missy did not know it) connected Missy's eloquent handling of
this subject with the fleeting appearance in Cherryvale of one
Ridgeley Holman Dobson. Dobson had given a "Lyceum Course" lecture
in the Opera House, but Missy remembered him not because of what he
lectured about, nor because he was an outstanding hero of the recent
Spanish-American war, nor even because of the scandalous way his
women auditors, sometimes, rushed up and kissed him. No. She
remembered him because . . . Oh, well, it would have been hard to
explain concretely, even to herself; but that one second, when she
was taking her turn shaking hands with him after the lecture, there
was something in his dark bright eyes as they looked deeply into her
own, something that made her wish--made her wish--
It was all very vague, very indefinite. If only Cherryvale afforded
a chance to know people like Ridgeley Holman Dobson! Unprosaic
people, really interesting people. People who had travelled in far
lands; who had seen unusual sights, plumbed the world's
possibilities, done heroic deeds, laid hands on large affairs.
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