Bd — a “ Beworvalic; aca Bellefonte, Pa., September 4, 1914. soma —— The Story of Waitstill Baxter By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN Cepyright, 1913. by Kate Douglas Wiggin ? SYNOPSIS ‘Waltstill Baxter and her sister, Patience Patty), keep house for their widowed, mean father. Ivory Boynton, whose fa- ther disappeared, is interested in Waitstill. He takes care of his daft mother. Mrs. Boynton expects her husband to Jevar) Rodman, a young boy, is a mem- of the Boynton household. Ivory’s father abandoned his family to follow Jacob Cochrane, a mystic. Pa- tlence chafes under her father’s stern ule. Patty has two admirers—Mark Wilson, am educated young man, and Cephas Cole, who is unlearned. Mark kisses her. Waitstill is spending her life in loving eare of Patience. Aunt Abby and Uncie Bart Cole are friends of the whole com- munity. Cephas Cole, tending store for Baxter, proposes to Patty and is rejected. In his agitation he lets the molasses run all ever the store floor. Although they love each other, Waitstill and Ivory suppress their affection because of their household cares. Patty and Waitstill go to church, al- though their father is too mean to give them fitting garments. Waitstill sings in the choir. A strange young woman in the Wilson pew, a visitor from Boston, makes Patty $ealous. Haying time arrives. Waitstill decides to disobey her father dy paying a visit to Mrs. Boynton. Uncle Bart discourses to Cephas on woman's ways. Mrs. Boynton confides in Waitstill, tell- tng the girl she believes Rodman is not ber sister's child, but she cannot be sure. | To punish Waitstill for disobedience Deacon Baxter locks her out all night. 8be spends the night in the barn. Pa- tience sympathizes. Patience Baxter is embarrassed amid a | mmititude of suitors. She thinks Mark is fickle. Trying to trace his father, Ivory writes tw Waitstill a long account of Boynton's following of Cochrane, with which Mrs. | Boynton was not in full sympathy. The village gossips are busy with the mames of Waitstill and Ivory, but in a friendly and sympathetic manner. In Ivory’s absence young Rodman min- isters to Mrs. Boynton. She is ill and sends Rodman for Ivory. Ivory receives proof of his father’s death and succeeds in convincing his mother of it. Waitstill volunteers her help in the Boynton housekeeping. [Continued from last week.] “She will only worry herself sick,” | thought Patty. *‘She won't let me mar- ry without asking father's permission, and she’d think she ought not to aid me in deceiving him, and the tempest would be twice as dreadful if it fell | Now, if anything hap- - wpon us both! pens, I can tell father that I did it all myself and that Waitstiil knew noth- ing about it whatever. Then—ol, joy!— if father is too terrible I shall be a married woman and I can always say: | Wait- | will is dependent upon you no longer; she shall come at once to my hushand | 1 will not permit such ¢ruelty! 2nd me!" » This latter phrase almost intoxicated Patty, so that there were moments when she could have run up to Miili- | ken’s mills and purchased herself a | Rusband at any cost, had her slender savings permitted the best in the mar- ker, and the more impersonal the hus- Rand the more delightedly Patty rolled fhe phrase under her tongue. “I can never be ‘published’ in abureh,” she though!, “und perhaps no- Body will ever care enough about me to brave father's displeasure and in- sist on running away with me. I do wish somebody would care ‘frightfuily’ #bout me enough for that, enough to Relp me make up my mind, so that I eould just drive up to father's store some day and say. ‘Good afternoon, father! I knew you'd never let me marry’ "—there was always a dash + here in Patty’s imaginary discourses, a dash that could be filled in with any Christian name according to her mood of the moment—* ‘so I just married him anyway and you needn't be angry with my sister, for she knew nothing about it. My husband and I are sorry if you are displeased, but there's no Relp for it, and my husband’s home will always be open to Waitstill what- ever happens.’ Patty, with all her latent love of finery and ease, did not weigh the worldly circumstances of the two men, though the reflection that she would have more amusement with Mark than with Philip may have crossed her ind. She trusted Philip and respect- «d his steady going, serious view of Mfe. It pleased her vanity, too, to feel fow her nonsense and fun lightened his temperamental gravity, playing in and out and over it like a butterfly in a smoke bush. She would be safe with Philip always, but safety had no special charm for one of her age, who bad never been in peril. Mark’s supe- rior knowledge of the world, moreover, Ris careless, buoyant manner of carry- ing himself, his gay, boyish audacity, |. all had a very distinct charm for her— and yet— But there would be no “and yet” a Nttle later. Patty's heart would blaze quickly enough when sufficient heat was applied to it and Mark was fall- ing more and more deeply in love every day. As Patty vacillated his purpose strengthened, the more she weighed the more he ceased to weigh the difficulties of the situation, the more she nnfolded herself to him the more he ioved and the more he re- pected her. She began by delighting his senses, she ended by winning all that there was in him and creating continually the qualities he lacked, after the manner of true women even when they are very young and foolish. CHAPTER XVI. A State o’ Maine Prophet. UMMER was dying hard, for al- though it had passed. by the calendar, Mother Nature was still keeping up her customary attitude. There had been a soft rain in the night, and every spear of grass was brilliantly green and tipped with crys- tal. The smoke bushes in the garden plot and the asparagus bed beyond them looked misty as the sun rose higher, drying the soaked earth and dripping branches. Spiders’ webs, mar- vels of lace, dotted the short grass un- der the apple tree. Every flower that had a fragrance was pouring it grate- fully into the air: every bird with a joyous note in its voice gave it more joyously from a bursting throat. and dhe river laughed and rippled in the EE i en distance at the foot of Town House hill. The dawn grew into full morn- ing, and streams of blue smoke rose here and there from the Edgewood chimneys. The world was alive and so beautiful that Waitstill felt like going down on her knees in gratitude for having been born into it and given a | rest of the family took their places at chance of serving it in any humble way whatsoever. Wherever there was a barn. in Riv- erboro or Edgewood. one could have beard the three legged stools being lifted from the pegs. and then would begin the music of the milk pails; first the resonant sound of the stream in the ' bottom of the tin pail. then the soft, delicious purring of the cascade into the full bucket, while the cows serene- ly chewed their cuds and whisked away the flies with swinging tails. Deacon Baxter was taking his cows , to a pasture far over the hill, the feed having grown too short in his own fields. Patty was washing dishes in the kitchen and Waitstill was in the ' dairy house at the butter making, one of her chief delights. She worked with speed and with beautiful sureness, pat- ; ting, squeezing, rolling the golden mass like the true artist she was, then turn- ing the sweet scented wasxen balls out of the mould onto the big stone china platter that stood waiting. She had been up early, and for the last hour ‘she had toiled with devouring eager- must be a fortune teller. and the Lord ‘mess that she might have a little time | to herself. would be busy with the beds after she finished the dishes, so she drew a fold- | I { She Sat Down to Read the First Com- munication She Had Ever Received In lvory’s Handwriting. ed paper from her pocket, the first communication she had ever received in Ivory’s handwriting, and sat down to read it: My Dear Waitstill—Rodman will take this packet and leave it with you when he finds opportunity. It is not in any real sense a letter, so I am in no danger of in- curring your father’s displeasure. You cerning my father during the past few days, for Peter Morrill has been to En- field, N. H., where he says letters have been received stating that my father died in Cortland, O., more than five years ago. I shall do what I can to substantiate this fresh report, as I have always done with all the previous ones, but I have little hope of securing reliable information at this distance and after this length of time. I do not know when I can ever start on a personal quest myself, for even had I the money I could not leave home until Rodman is much older and fitted for greater responsibility. Oh, Waitstill, how you have helped my poor, dear mother! ‘Would that I were free to tell you how I value your friendship! It is something more than mere friendship. What you are doing is like throwing a life line to a sinking human being. Two or three times of late mother has forgotten to set out the supper things for my father. Her ten years’ incessant waiting for him seems to have subsided a little, and in its place she watches for you. [Ivory had written “watches for her daughter,” but carefully erased the last two words.] You come but seldom, but her heart feeds on the sight of you. What she needed, it seems, was the magical touch of youth and health and strength and sympathy, the qualities you possess in such great measure. If I had proof of my father’s death I think now perhaps that I might try to break it gently to my mother, as if it were fresh news, and see if possibly I might thus remove her principal halluci- nation. sane she is in many—indeed in most ways ~how sweet and lovable, even how sensi. ble? To help you better to understand the in- will probably have heard new rumors con- | You see now, do you not, how | It was hers now, for Patty } i | { | i fluence that has robbed me of both father and mother and made me and mine the subject of town and tavern gossip for years past 1 have written for you just a sketch of the “Cochrane craze,” the ro- mantic story of a man who swayed the wills of his fellow creatures in a truly marvelous manner. Some local historian of his time will doubtless give him more space. My wish is to have you know something more of the circumstances that have made me a prisoner in life instead of a free man. But, prisoner as I am at the moment, I am sustained just now by a new courage. 1 read in my copy of | Ovid last night, “The best of weapons is | the undaunted heart.” This will help you, ! too, in your hard life, for yours is the i most undaunted heart in all the world. | i | IVORY BOYNTON. The chronicle of Jacob Cochrane’s career in the little villages near the Saco river has no sueh interest for the general reader as it had for Waitstill Baxter. She hung upon every word that Ivory had written? and realized more clearly than ever before the shadow that had followed him since early boyhood—the sume shadow that Almost every home has a dictionary in : which the meaning of words can be! found. It is far more important for every home to have a reference book in ! which the meaning of symptoms of ill health is explained. Dr. Pierce’s Com- | mon Sense Medical Adviser is a dictionary ! of the body. It answers the questions | which are asked in every family con-! cerning health and disease. Other dic- tionaries are costly. This is sent free on receipt of stamps to pay expense of mail- ing only. Send 21 one-cent stamps for the book bound in paper, or 31 stamps for cloth binding, to Dr. V. M. Pierce, Buffalo, N. Y. In the Darkest Hour. When weary life, breathing reluc- tant breath, hath no hope sweeter than the hope of death; then the best coun- gel and the best relief to cheer the gpirit or to cheat the grief, the only calm, the only comfort heard, comes in the music of a woman's word.—Ed- win Arnold. had fallen across his mother's mind and left continual twilight there. No one really knew, it seemed, why or from whence Jacob Cochrane had come to Edgewood. He simply ap- peared at the old tavern a stranger, , with satchel in hand, to seek enter. . tainment. Uncle Bart had often de- teribed this scene to Waitstill, for he was. one of those sitting about the great open fire at the time. The man easily slipped into the group and soon took the lead in conversation, delight | ing all with his agreeable personality. his nimble tongue and graceful speech. At supper time the hostess and the the long table, as was the custom, and be astonished them by his knowledge not only of town history, but of village matters they had supposed unknown to any one : When the stranger had finished his ! supper and returned to the barroom he had to pass through a long entry, and Hood’s Sars p:- rilla. Severe Rheumatic Pains Disappear Rheumatism depends on an acid which flows in the blood, affecting the muscles and joints, producing inflammation, stiff- ness and pain. This acid gets into the blood through some defect in the diges- tive processes, and remains there because the liver, kidneys and skin are too torpid to carry it off. Hood's Sarsaparilla, the old-time blood tonic, is very successful in the treatment of rheumatism. It acts directly, with purifying effect, on the blood, and through the blood on the liver, kidneys and skin, which it stimulates, and at the same time it improves the digestion. Get Hood's Sarsaparilla today. Sold by “all druggists. 59-33 the landlady. whispering to her daugh- ter, said: “Betsy, you go up to the chamber Excursion. closet and get the silver and bring it down. This man is going to sleep there, and I am afraid of him. He only knows what else!” In going to the chamber the daugh- ter had to pass through the barroom. As she was moving quietly through, hoping to escape the notice of the new- comer, he turned in his chair and, looking her full in the face, suddenly said: : “Madam, you needn't touch your sil- ver. I don’t want it. I am a gentle- man.” Whereupon the bewildered Betsy scuttled back to ber mother and told Niagara F alls] Personally-Conducted Excursions September 11, 25, October 9, 1914 Round $7.30 Trip FROM BELLEFONTE SPECIAL TRAIN of Pullman Parlor Cars Dining Car, and Coaches through the Picturesque Susquehanna Valley. Tickets good going an Special Train and con- necting trains, and returning on regular trains within FIFTEEN DAYS. Stop off at Buffalo her the strange guest was indeed a fortune teller. Of Cochrane’s initial appearance as a preacher Ivory had told Waitstill in their talk in the churchyard early in the summer. It was at a child's fu- [Continued on page 7, Col. 11 EE. The Centre County within limit on return trip. Illustrated Booklet and full information may be obtained from Ticket Agents. Pennsylvania R.R. 59-25-16. Banking Company. A Bank Account is Life's Best Insurance time of death proves itself the ance. You can IX that really insures, a terest. Leave it there. You of insurance. This pays. Best Policy. The First National Bank. mediately and without question. ing life the bank account proves equally valuable, provided it is kept at a figure Get your cash in the bank. tion and sometimes self sacrifice. A bank account with us is your i The Centre County Banking Co. the bank account ¢st Kind of insur- get your money im- Dur- nd it pays Better In- can’t beat that kind requires determina- But it BELLEFONTE PA. Open an WITH 1S We furnish bank book, check book and Stationery, free. Checks are the most convenient form of payment. They are returned to the sender endorsed. This is a receipt. Every every woman should have an account with a well managed Account business man and bank. The First National Bank 50-1-1y BELLEFONTE. PA. Shoes. Shoes. Yeager’s Shoe Store “RITZEZY” The Ladies’ - Shoe that Cures Corns Sold only at Yeager’s Shoe Store, Bush Arcade Building, BELLEFONTE, PA 58-27 Dry Goods, Eic. LYON & COMPANY. We are Showing Early Fall Dress Goods Just opened a full line of the latest im- ported Dress Fabrics in stripes, plaids, checks and plain weaves. All the new colors. Trimmings and buttons to match. La Vogue Coats and Suits * We are showing the advance styles in Fall and Winter Coats and Suits. We Invite Inspection and take pleasure in showing the new fabrics and styles. Clearance sale of all Summer Stuffs still on. Lyon & Co. .... Bellefonte
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