Bellefonte, Pa., October 2, 1914. The Story oi Waitstill Baxter By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN Copyright, 1913. by Kate Douglas Wiggin | SYNOPSIS ‘Walitstill Baxter and her sister, Patience ty), keep house for their widowed, n father. Ivory Boynton, whose fa- ther disappeared, is interested in Walitstill. He takes care of his daft mother. Mrs. Boynton expects her husband to rn. Rodman, a young boy, is a mem- of the Boynton household. | Ivory’s father abandoned his family to follow Jacob Cochrane, a mystic. Pa-~ | tience chafes under her father’s stern rule. Patty has two admirers—Mark Wilson, | an educated young man, and Cephas Cole. | Who is unlearned. Mark kisses her. i Waitstill is spending her life in loving gare 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 over 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 Jealous. Haying time arrives. Waitstill decides to disobey her father by paying a visit to Mrs. Boynton. Uncle Bart discourses to Cephas on woman's ways. Mrs, Boynton confides in Waitstill, tell- Ing 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. Bbe spends the night in the barn. Pa- tience sympathizes. Patience Baxter is embarrassed amid a multitude of suitors. She thinks Mark is fickle. : Trying to trace his father, Ivory writes ‘0 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 ames of Waitstill and Ivory. but in a €riendly and sympathetic manner. In Ivory’s absence young Rodman min- fsters to Mrs. Boynton. She is ill and @ends Rodman for Ivory. Ivory receives proof of his father's death ' and succeeds in convincing his mother of §t. Waitstill volunteers her help in the Boynton housekeeping. Despairing of winning Patty, Cephas turns his affections elsewhere. Patty and Mark are now sweethearts. © Patty and Mark know Deacon Baxter will not consent to their marriage, so they plan an elopement to New Hamp- shire. Deacon Baxter is more than usually “difficult.” Patty runs off with Mark, is married and returns and tells Waitstill. The deacon turns Patty out into the Cold. She finds shelter with Aunt Abby and Uncle Bart. ] [Continued from last week.] “It’s all there underneath.” said Pat- ty, putting her hand on his arm and turning her wistful face to his. “It will come again. The girl in me isn't dead. She isn't even asleep. but she's all sobered down She can’t laugh Just now, she can only smile, and the tears are waiting underneath, ready to spring out if any one says the wrong word. This Patty is frightened and anxious, and her heart beats too fast from morning till night. She hasn't any mother, and she cannot say a word to her dear sister. and she's going away to be married tu you, that’s al- most a stranger, and she isn't eighteen and doesn't know what's coming to ber nor what it means to be married. She dreads her father's anger, and she cannot rest till she knows whether Your family will love her and take her in, and. oh, she's u miserable, worried girl, not a bit like the old Patty!” Mfark held her close and smoothed fihe curls under the loose brown hood. “Don’t you fret, Patty darling. I'm wot the boy 1 was last week. Every “word you say makes me more of a ‘man. [| wish the road to New Hamp- shire was full of lions and 1 could fight ‘my way through them just to show ‘you how strong 1 feel.” 2 ““*There’ll be lions encugh,” smiled: “Patty through her tears, “though they won't have manes and tails. But I can imagine how father will roar and how my courage will ooze out of the heels of my boots.” “Just let me catch the deacon roar- ing at my wife!” exclaimed Mark, with | a swelling chest. “Now, run along home, Patty, dear, for 1 don’t want You scolded on my account. I'll sound Ellen and see if she's brave enough to be one of the ecloping party. Good night! Good night!” CHAPTER XXII. A Wedding Ring. HE snow had come. It had be- gun to fall softly and steadily at the beginning of the week, and now for days it had cov- ered the ground deeper and deeper, drifting about the little red brick house on the hilltop, banking up against the barn and shrouding the sheds and the smaller buildings. ‘There had heen two cold, still nights; the windows were covered with silvery fandscapes whose delicate foliage made | | i | | | road down to the store without wait- { ing for the help of the village snow i | . between them and her father's scanty | of straw and a mouthful of extra food , temperate climate in that one room. | though the entries and chambers might ! very birth to discomforts and expo- ‘tered in all its accustomed cleanliness . were cheap amusements and nobody every pane of glass a leafy bower, while a dazzling crust bediamonded the hillsides, so that no eye could rest on them long without becoming snow blinded. Town House hill was not as well traveled as many others. and Deacon Baxter had often to break his own plow to make things easier for him. Many a path had Waitstill broken in her time. and it was by no means one of her most distasteful tasks—that of shoveling into the drifts of heaped up whiteness, tossing them to one side or the other and cutting a narrow. clean edged track that would pack down | into the hardness of marble. There were many “chores” to be! done these cold mornings before any | household could draw a breath of com- fort. The Baxters kept but one cow in winter, killed the pig—not to eat, but to sell—and reduced the flock of hens and turkeys, but Waitstill was ai- ways as busy in the barn as in her own proper domain. ~ Her heart yearned for all the dumb creatures about the place, intervening care, and when the thermometer de- scended far below zeto she would be found stutiing hay into the holes and cricks of the barn and henhouse, giv- ing the horse and cow fresh beddings between the slender meals provided by the deacon. It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and | a fire in the Baxters' kitchen since 6 in the morning had produced a fairly bave been used for refrigerators, as the deacon was as parsimonious in the farm, Waitstill reflected, and she could | take her sled and slide half the way, | going and coming. or she could cut across the frozen fields on the crust. stairway, ran up to her bedroom to make herself ready for the walk, before, having to bind up a cut finger ; for her father. she had searched Pat- | ty’s bureau drawer for an old hand-' ' kerchief, and had left things in disor- She caught up her shawl from a hook | on the kitchen door, and, throwing it ! over her head and shoulders to shield | herself from the chill blasts on the | She slipped on a quilted petticoat | and a warmer dress, braided her hair freshly. while her breath went out in a white cloud to meet the freezing air; snatched her wraps from her closet. and was just going down the stairs, | { { when she remembered that an hour | der while she ran to answer the dea- con's impatient call and stamp upon the kitchen floor. : “Hurry up and don't make me stan’ here all winter!” be had shouted. “If you ever kept things in prover order you woulda’t have to hunt all over the house for a piece of rag when you need it!” Patty was very dainty about her few patched and darned belongings; also very exact in the adjustment of her [Continued on page 7. Col. 11 Hardware. use of ruel as in all other things, and if his daughters had not been hardy young creatures, trained from their sures of every sort, they would have died long ago. i The Baxter kitchen shone and glit- and order. Scrubbing and polishing gradual them to Waitstill. No tables fn Riverboro were whiter. no tins more lustrous, no pewter brighter, no brick hearths ruddier than hers. The beans and brown bread and Indian pudding were basking in the warmth of the old brick oven, and what with the crackle and sparkle of the fire, the gleam of the blue willow ware on the cupboard shelves, and the scarlet gera- niums blooming on the sunny shelf above the sink, there were few pleas- anter places to be found in the village than that same Baxter kitchen. Yet Waitstill was ill at ease this afternoon; she hardly knew why. Her father had just put the horse into the pung and driven up to Milliken's mills | for some grain, and Patty was down at the store instructing Bill Morrill and ranges. 59-10-tf (Cephas Cole’s successor) in his “novel task of waiting on customers and learning the whereabouts of things; no | easy task in the bewildering variety of stock in a country store, where pins, treacle, gingham, epsom salts, Indian meal, shoestrings, shovels, brooms, sul- phur, tobacco, suspenders, rum and in- digo may be demanded in rapid sue- cession. Patty was quiet and docile these days, though her color was more bril- liant than usual, and her eyes had all thefr accustomed sparkle. She went about her work steadily, neither rant- ing nor railing at fate, nor bewailing | her lot, but even in this Waitstill felt a sense of change and difference too | subtle to be put in words. She had noted Patty's summer flirtations, but regarded them indulgently, very much as if they had been the irresponsible friskings of n lamb in a meadow. Waitstill had more than the usual reserve in these matters, for in New England at that time, though the soul was a subject of daily conversation, the heart was felt to be rather an in- delicate topic to be alluded to as sel- dom as possible. Waitstill certainly would never have examined Patty closely as to the state of her affec- : tions. intimate as she was with her . sister's thoughts and opinions about life. She simply bided her. time until Patty should confide in her. She had wished now and then that Patty's capricious fancy might settle on Philip Perry. although. indeed, when she considered it seriously, it seemed like an alliance between a but- | terfly and an owl. Cephas Cole she re- garded as quite beneath Patty's right. ful ambitions, and, as for Mark Wil- son, she had grown up in the belief, held in the village generally, that he would marry money and position and drift out of Riverboro into a gayer, larger world. Her devotion to her sis- ter was so ardent and her admiration | so sincere that she could not think it i possible that Patty would love any- | where in vain. Nevertheless she had an ‘instinct that her affections were ‘crystallizing somewhere or other, and | when that happened the uncertain and | eccentric temper of her father would raise a thousand obstacles. While these thoughts coursed more or less vagrantly through Waitstill’s mind she suddenly determined to get ber cloak and hood and run over to see Mrs. Boynton. Ivory had been away a good deal in the woods since early November chopping trees and helping to make new roads. He could not go long distances like the other men, as he felt constrained to come home ev- ery day or two to look after his moth- er and Rodman, but the work was too lucrative to be altogether refused. With Waitstill's help he had at last overcome his mother’s aversion to old Mrs. Mason. their nearest neighbor, and she. being now a widow with very slender resources, went to the Boyntons' several times each week to put. the forlorn household a little on its feet. : OLEWINE’S HARDWARE, The First National Bank. i A. [ll ASH i ih ag <TH A Pe DOCKASH. Tus LABEL stands for the best that is made. guarantee is better than your guessing, and it is backed by the world’s largest manufacturer of stoves Our BELLEFONTE, PA. The War in Europe finds the United States equipped with a bank- ing system designed to meet every emergency. Twelve great Reserve Banks located in the chief cities of the Union, with a membership of more than seven thousand other banks, all acting as a unit when necessary, give a strength and stability to the system that will bear the severest tests. Bank and are prepared to serve you in every department of banking. We are a Member It was all uphill and down to Ivory's 59-1-1y The Centre County Banking Company. The First National Bank BELLEFONTE, PA. A Bank Account is Life’s Best Insurance IN terest. of insurance. Best Policy. time of death the bank account proves itself the est Kind of insur- ance. You can get your money im- mediately and without question. ing life the bank account proves equally valuable, provided it is kept at a figure that really insures, and it pays Better In- Get your cash in the bank. Leave it there. You can’t beat that kind This requires determina- tion and sometimes self sacrifice. pays. A bank account with us is your . ut The Centre County Dur- But it Banking Co. BELLEFONTE PA. Shoes. Shoes. Yeager’s Shoe Store “FITZEZY” The Ladies’ Shoe that Cures Corns Sold only at Yeager’s Shoe Store, Bush Arcade Building, BELLEFONTE, PA 58.27 Dry Goods, Etc. LYON & COMPANY. ~~ La Vogue = Coats and Suits Our Coat and Suit department for ladies and children is receiving new models every day. The most favored modes are here in complete assort- ment. High-class garments such as one might expect from an exclusive tailor, but with all the styles and smartness that characterize Parisian products. In Children’s Coats wecan show just as large and var'ed styles as the ladies’ depart- ment. We have made special selections for the large women. We can fit the largest or the smallest. Dress Goods. All the newest fabrics in Dress Goods, in the new Fall shades. Trimmings to match. Chiffons and Nets. The separate blouse is the new feature for the evening gown. We are showing all the new em- broidered and new flowered Chiffons. Underwear, Blankets, Comfortables. These departments are receiving new shipments every week. Shoes. Shoes. Men’s Shoes, Ladies’ Shoes, all the Winter weights. Children’s Shoes for schocl and dress. - Prices have not advanced. Showing styles and qualities is one of our strong features. Lyon & Co. su. Bellefonte
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