Read "Cass Timberlane, A Novel of Husbands and Wives" by Sinclair Lewis online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
He was not unduly intrusive on the other rehearsals, but merely looked on a moment when he called to drive her home. He was pleased to see how patiently Jinny was working; her part letter- perfect after two weeks, taking direction, merely arguing a little with Rice Helix when he insisted that a Perfect Lady expressed her emotions by showing all her teeth and wriggling her fingers as though a bug was crawling over them.
Cass was puzzled by Fred Nimbus's intentions. Now, whenever it was Fred's appalling duty to embrace Jinny, he did so lightly, with tapping fingers. But a sour thought occurred to Cass: that Fred might be taking advantage of that most sound and ancient technique of the child--knowing that the safest time to steal the jam is when the family is ashamed of itself for having yelled at it for having stolen the jam. It had never quite come to Judge Timberlane that there are men outside jail who make it a careful and well-funded business to seduce all the pretty women in sight, and that against their expert business-methods, an innocent householder is helpless.