They pop up
now and then in the shifting crowds, and are gone the
next moment, leaving behind them a vague regret.
Sometimes I call them the People I'd Like to Know and
sometimes I call them the People I Know I'd Like, but it
means much the same. Their faces flash by in the crowd,
and are gone, but I recognize them instantly as belonging
to my beloved circle of unknown friends.
Once it was a girl opposite me in a car--a girl with
a wide, humorous mouth, and tragic eyes, and a hole in
her shoe. Once it was a big, homely, red-headed giant of
a man with an engineering magazine sticking out of his
coat pocket. He was standing at a book counter reading
Dickens like a schoolboy and laughing in all the right
places, I know, because I peaked over his shoulder to
see. Another time it was a sprightly little, grizzled
old woman, staring into a dazzling shop window in which
was displayed a wonderful collection of fashionably
impossible hats and gowns. She was dressed all in rusty
black, was the little old lady, and she had a quaint cast
in her left eye that gave her the oddest, most sporting
look. The cast was working overtime as she gazed at the
gowns, and the ridiculous old sprigs on her rusty black
bonnet trembled with her silent mirth.
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