Wanted: A Husband. A Novel

Wanted: A Husband - A Novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams. OUT OF ORDER! pertly announced the placard on the elevator. To Miss Darcy Cole wavering on damp ill-conditioned and reluctant legs this seemed the final malignancy of the mean-spirited fates. Four beetling flights to climb! Was it worth the effort? Was anything worth the effort of that heart-breaking ascent? For that matter was anything worth anything anyway? Into such depths of despond had the spirit of Miss Cole lapsed.. At the top of the frowning heights the studio apartment of Miss Gloria Greene would open to her. There would be tea fresh-brewed and invigorating. There would be a broad and restful couch full of fluffy pillows comforting to tired limbs. There would be Gloria Greene herself big and beautiful and radiant representing everything which poor little Darcy Cole was not but most wished to be and furthermore a sure source of wise counsel or at worst of kindly solace for a case which might be too hopeless for counsel. As alternative a return to the wind-swept rain-chilled New York side street. No; the thing had to be done! Darcy nerved her soggy muscles to the ordeal.. On the second landing she paused to divide a few moments between hard breathing and hating the imitation-leather roll beneath her arm. Including the wall-paper design within just rejected by B. Riegel & Sons the whole affair might have weighed two pounds. To its ill-conditioned bearer it felt like two hundred. She set a hand to her panting chest and a thorn promptly impaled her thumb. Tearing off the offending rose Darcy flung it over the banister rail. It was a flabby second-hand wraith of a rose anyhow having been passed down to the wearer by her flat-mate Maud Raines who in turn had it along with eleven others from her fiancé.. Darcy stuck out a vindictive tongue at the discarded flower. Nobody ever sent her roses! Dully musing upon the injustices of existence she clambered up the third flight and leaned against the wall to rally her spent energies with her hands thrust deep into the sagging pockets of her coat. Something light and scratchy rubbed against her bare forefinger which was protruding from a hole in her glove. Being exhumed it revealed itself as one of those tiny paper frills wherein high-priced candy is chastely attired. The departed bonbon had come from a box sent by Paul Wood the architect to Darcy's other flat-mate Helen Barrett to whom he had just become engaged. Darcy let the inoffensive ornament flutter from her fingers to the floor and crushed it flat with a vengeful foot. Nobody ever sent her candy in frilly collars! Nobody ever sent her anything! Oozing wretchedness and self-pity she took the final flight in a rush burst in upon the labors of Miss Gloria Greene planted herself in the middle of the floor dropped her work roll and kicked it as far as she could and lifted up the voice of lamentation in the accepted phrase duly made and provided for such of feminine sex and tender years as find the weary pattern of the world too tangled for their solving.. Oh I wuh—wuh—wish I were duh—duh—dead! mourned Miss Cole with violence.. Gloria Greene dropped the typed sheets which she had been studying and rose from her chair. She looked down at the lumpy lax figure of helpless petulant rebellion before her.. Oh you do do you? she remarked pensively.. Yes; I do!