The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher
“But inside the house—in a room called the “music” room because it held chairs in which no one could settle, a piano on which no one played, and a broken guitar slanted in a corner like a stricken figure—the Elkin child, Hester, lay on the floor, wishing that the war would never end and that a little old couple called the Katzes had never come to the party at all.
Outside, in the pink, operatic light, all the town guests, most of them Mr. Elkin’s elderly retainers, had just gone, looking almost ...rakish out of their city serge, in the foulards, pongees, and sere straws they had thought proper to the occasion. Her father, who was the head of the family and of the business which supported it, attracted retainers—as her mother often said—as if he were royalty. Even when they were no kin and useless to the point of impossibility, like old Mr. Katz, they swam knowingly toward him out of the sea of incompetents, and he kept them on, out of sympathy, some vanity, and an utter lack of the executive violence necessary to have off with their heads.MoreLess
Outside, in the pink, operatic light, all the town guests, most of them Mr. Elkin’s elderly retainers, had just gone, looking almost ...rakish out of their city serge, in the foulards, pongees, and sere straws they had thought proper to the occasion. Her father, who was the head of the family and of the business which supported it, attracted retainers—as her mother often said—as if he were royalty. Even when they were no kin and useless to the point of impossibility, like old Mr. Katz, they swam knowingly toward him out of the sea of incompetents, and he kept them on, out of sympathy, some vanity, and an utter lack of the executive violence necessary to have off with their heads.MoreLess
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