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White, Stewart Edward, 1873-1946

"The Claim Jumpers"


Mary and Bennington found themselves caught up at once into the vortex.
After a few moments of desperate clinging together, they were forced
into the front row, where they stood on the very edge, braced back
against the pressure, half laughing, half vexed.
The train drew in with a grinding rush. From the step swung the
conductor. Faces looked from the open windows.
On the platform of one of the last cars stood a young girl and three
men. One of the men was elderly, with white hair and side whiskers. The
other two were young and well dressed. The girl was of our best
patrician type--the type that may know little, think little, say
little, and generally amount to little, and yet carry its negative
qualities with so used an air of polite society as to raise them by
sheer force to the dignity of positive virtues. From head to foot she
was faultlessly groomed. From eye to attitude she was languidly
superior--the impolitic would say bored. Yet every feature of her
appearance and bearing, even to the very tips of her enamelled and
sensibly thick boots, implied that she was of a different class from
the ordinary, and satisfied on "common people" that impulse which
attracts her lesser sisters to the vulgar menagerie.


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