Explore "Five Thousand an Hour" by George Randolph Chester on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Johnny, relying like a lost mariner on Polly Parsons and Constance Joy to help him pick out a present for his only mother, approached Lofty's with a diffidence amounting to awe. In that exclusive shop he would meet miles of furbelowed femininity, but he would not have ventured unprotected into those fluffed and billowed aisles for anything short of a penance.
Being a philosopher, however, he kept his mind active in as many other directions as possible, like a child deliberately feasting upon thoughts of Santa Claus though on the way to a promised spanking.