The Mission of Poubalov — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

8 THEIR WEDDING MORNING. for she had been expecting it with quivering anxiety for the last half hour. Good soul! With eggs at thirty-five cents a dozen she nevertheless plunged two in hot water every four minutes, in order that her lodger might not trace the slightest sense of disappointment, on this event- ful day, to her. ‘‘IT do hope his last breakfast here will be a pleasant one,’’ she said when her daughter protested against the extravagance. There was certainly nothing in the plain breakfast to call for criticism. Ivan might not have noticed it if there had been, for his thoughts were elsewhere, and his emo- tions were stirred by causes at once more delicate and more powerful than appetite; but Mrs. White was prob- ably in the right. It would have been a pity to permit any chance of a jarring note however slight in the har- mony that pervaded his being. Ivan greeted his landlady gayly, and attacked his meal as if there were no such thing as love in the world, love that makes man melancholy, that destroys the delights of good living, that drives him to the production of gloomy wails in more or less eccentric verse. There was no such love for him. Out of the storm and stress of an event- ful career, in which misfortune had rained its blows upon him with undue severity, love had arisen like the com- forting glow of « home hearth fire, and it shone upon his exile with naught in its beams but serenity and peace. Ivan was happy. | Breakfast was hardly begun when Mrs. White again ap- peared. ‘*There’s a gentleman to see you, Mr. Strobel,’’ she said hesitatingly ; ‘‘I didn’t like to disturb you, but he seemed very anxious, and so I said I would see if you were at home. ”’ She laid a card upon the breakfast table and waited. Ivan glanced at it and frowned. So, there must needs be a cloud upon this day to remind him, as if he needed it! Eomichooks.com