The Banker and the Bear

Book Excerpt: cigars, and there was nothing to prohibit a boy and a girl from sitting close together on the wide sofa and looking over portfolios of steel engravings from famous paintings--and talking of nothing in particular, or at least not of the steel engravings.At last one Sunday afternoon in early spring, after months of suspense that seemed years to John, Alice consented to marry him, and John was so happy that he did not blush or stammer, as they had been sure he would, when he told...