On the Firing Line

Name: On the Firing Line
Author: Anna Chapin Ray

by Anna Chapin Ray

Pages: about 231
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 4.2 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 2.4 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

Six feet one in his stockings, broad-shouldered and without an ounce of extra flesh, Harvard Weldon suddenly halted before one of a line of deck chairs.
"You are more fortunate than most people." Her answering tone was dry.
Most men would have been baffled by her apparent indifference. Not so was Weldon. Secure in the possession of a good tailor and an equally good digestion, he was willing to await the leisurely course of events.
"You are in the care of a physician?" she queried, with a whimsical glance up at his brown face and athletic figure.
"Not just now. I was once, however." She raised her brows in polite interrogation. Her involuntary thawing of a moment before had given place to absolute conventionality. Weldon smiled to himself, as he noted the change. He had been at sea for three days now, and those three days had been chiefly spent in trying to penetrate the social shell of his next neighbor at table. It was not so much that Ethel Dent was undeniably pretty as that he had been piqued by her frosty reception of his efforts to supplement the services of a careless waiter.
"If I may?" he said questioningly, as he raised his cap. "Yes, I have had a doctor twice. Once was measles, once a collar bone broken in football. Both times, I was urged to take a walk after luncheon. Is Miss Arthur--?"
He hesitated for the right word. Still ignoring his obvious hint, Ethel Dent supplied the word, without charity for her luckless chaperon. "Horridly seasick." She pointed out to the level steely-gray sea. "And on this duck-pond," she added.
The girl brushed a lock of vivid gold hair from her eyes; then she sat up, to add emphasis to her words. "Miss Arthur has been to America and back seven times and to Australia once," she said conclusively.

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On the Firing Line

From the opening

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