Demo adn,
Bellefonte, Pa., June 6, 1924.
EE A BEN. ETT,
THE GARDEN.
1 planted a garden on a sunshiny day
And marked well each flower bed there,
I pictured a wonderful bower in May,
And rejoiced that my world would be
fair.
As each tiny seedling sent forth its head
I nurtured and watered it well,
And covered them oe’r when chilling winds
sped,
Yet deep was the woe that befell.
Though I'd marked each plot with names
of the seeds :
And planted the most wonderful bowers,
Instead of the blossoms came thistles and
weeds,
I'd mistaken such seeds to be flowers.
So oft did I sow in the springtime of life,
And hoped that each flower would be
fair,
But they blossomed forth brambles and
thistles of strife
Till life’s garden was bleak with de-
spair.
Then did I watch and study the seeds
Till I knew every weed from a flower.
I listened to wiser and holier creeds,
Then planted the seeds of true power.
For in life as with flowers the seeds that
we Sow,
Be they orchids or brambles or weeds,
Pay no heed to our hopes, but spring forth
and grow
Just as we've planted the seeds.
—Kansas City Star.
IN EVERY PORT.
(Concluded from last week).
Garrett was making pleasant con-
versation with a touch of condescen-
sion. “You've never been out here be-
fore, Mr. Nicolls?”
“I had a couple of years in China,”
said Nicolls amiably.
“How did you like it?”
“Found it very interesting. Off the
regular trail of course. It’s no life to
falter in.”
“Where had you rather have duty ?”
inquired Garrett courteously.
“Oh, no especial place,” said Nicolls.
“‘Home is where the heart is,”
quoted Margot wickedly.
“ ‘W’erever I ’ave been, I've found
3 good,” ” Nicolls supplemented bland-
y.
She flung him a sidewise glimmer
of appreciation. He smiled down at
her caressingly—lightnings playing
under the very nose of the whole-
somely insensitive Garrett—then the
three of them came to the steps of
Rosie Morrison’s big white house,
and the foamy tide of the party took
them and bore them along. Once in
that first unremarkable evening Mar-
got danced with Nicolls. She had
driven out to the Moana, by Rosie’s
somewhat tactless arrangement, with
Garrett, in his great, high-powered
roadster; and with Garrett, by some
awkward and unforseen chance, she
remained. He was a man who knew
what he wanted and had various rath-
er heavy-footed ways of keeping it
where he wanted it. So that Nicolls,
driving out with Rosie herself, found
the evening well along before he could
detach Margot and carry her off.
He scarcely spoke while the music
sounded. Margot said nothing at all.
She let herself go deliberately, and
clung to his protecting shoulder with
small, slim, trusting fingers. She
would have liked to shut her eyes, but
her sense of humor wouldn't let her.
They danced four encores and looked
at each other flushed and gloriously
intoxicated when the smiling Hawiian
boy at the piano got up and walked
away.
“Give me the next,” said Nicolls
briefly.
“Sixth from now,” breathed Mar-
got. She swirled her fan in lovely, fe-
line half-circles, while they stood at
the top of the steps in the wake of
the outpouring crowd.
“Will there be six more tonight ?”
“Not likely.”
“Then where do I get off?”
She shrugged her soft lips twisting
in the smile that was only in books.
“You work fast, I think you said ?”
“Come down on the pier with me,
and sit out the intermissio, anyhow,”
said Nicolls.
He took her arm with a touch of
proprietary insistence. She felt that
he would have liked to shake her, and
as a matter of fact, at the moment,
that was exactly what he would have
liked best to do.
Various eyes observed their pass-
ing. Rosie gestured feigned disap-
proval. Garrett called to Margot as
she slipped by their table:
“Want your scarf?”
“You see?” said Margot with a soft
little sigh. “I shall be well taken care
of—in case—"
The pier was reasonably dim, not
too closely populated. Margot and
Nicolls sat down upon a bench looking
toward the open sea. "He opened his
hand, and she lay hers within it.
Moonlight lay upon the waves like a
web of torn and streaming silver
laces. From Diamond Head a search-
light flung its cruel and passionless
question across the dark. It touched
the crest of a wave and made it naked
in the night; picked a rocking sam-
pan out of mysterious nothingness
and dropped it back again; fingered
the sky like an atheist’s doubt of God;
swept insolently back and forth
among the stars—and was gone.
“Will you come to dinner on the
New York tomorrow night?” asked
Nicolls. :
“Why, I think so. Is it a party?”
“It will be, if you'll come. I'll get
one or two couples to fill in. What
are you doing Monday ?”
“I don’t know. Rosie’s keeping the
itinerary. Is this a questionnaire ?”
“Tuesday there’s a dance on board
the West Virginia. Will you go with
me
“Why not take the whole week and
have done with it?” she drawled pro-
vokingly.
“You're on!” Nicolls said at once.
“That was what I wanted after all, if | kn
this is going to be a perfect ten
days—""
She laughed, and he laughed with
‘| you care ever to see me again.
her. Her hand lay very warm and
small and soft in his, with strange
magnetic tremors in the fingertips.
“Ill tell you, Margot,” he said
slowly, drawing the tips of her im-
prisoned fingers gently across his
cheek tili they came to his lips and
lingered there, “what I'm afraid of is
learning sense. There's a lot of fun
in being a fool and knowing it. But it
goes with the teens and twenties.
Thirty begins to demand the merest
trifle of filling in the dear old bean.
Something tells me that, at times. I
have my intelligent moments. Just
now, however, I'd give the Lord High
Admiral’s job—the earth and the full-
ness thereof—the whole bally show—
for this brief friendly session with
you on the edge of the Pacific—God
bless the bird that discovered it! Look
at me, Margot!”
She smiled with averted face.
“You're afraid to!”
“Not yet. I'm conserving my emo-
tions. You’ll have us in love and out
of it again before the week’s half
gone, at the rate you're going. Be-
sides I hear the music beginning, and
I have this dance.”
She stood up. He did the same, re-
luctantly.
“How early can I call you in the
morning 7”
“Oh, you are a treasure!” said Mar-
got amusedly. “Not before Slovo iz
e
poor working-girl has to sleep some
time, you know.”
He called her at five minutes before
eleven, and in a carefully-darkened
room with the trade-wind puffing the
curtains languidly in and out, she put
the hair out of her eyes, yawned,
stretched her pretty arms above her
head, and satup in bed to answer
him.
“Good morning, Miss Castleman,”
said that slightly drawling voice, odd-
ly disturbing to an even pulse-beat.
She answered after a drowsy sec-
ond, “Yes—Jim ?”
He said instantly on an exaggerat-
edly different note: “It’s so, then? I
thought I must have dreamed it!”
“Perhaps I only dreamed it, too.”
“So long as we both dream it, who
cares?” He added coaxingly, “It’s
been a long time, Margot!”
He had asked Rosie and a Mrs. Car-
stairs for dinner on the ship that
night. It was the usual fiesta, in a
long, brightly-lighted wardroom with
attentive Filipino boys at everybody’s
elbow, with a piano against one wall,
a phonograph against another. A
gorgeous afterglow hung in the west-
ern sky as Margot went up the gang-
way. Later the moon rose in a flare
of white fire, against which the skele-
ton masts of the great, gray ship hung
sinisterly dark.
That night while the other men of
the party, a rotund Commander and
a small, dark, amiable Paymaster,
were surreptitinusly displaying the
photographs of their respective wives
and children to Rosie’s and Mrs. Car-
stairs’ sympathetic eyes, Nicolls drew
Margot aside and led the way into his
own quarters; a compact, narrow, ti-
dy place with every inch of space ef-
ficiently utilized.
He stopped her with a hand on her
slender arm before his desk and said
briefly,
“Look, Margot!”
The desk held the usual writing ma-
terials, a book or so, an ash-tray, a
box of cigarettes, and a large, oval,
silver frame—empty.
“I want you to fill it for me,” said
Nicolls gently.
She looked up at him, half smiling:
“I'm the first, of course?”
“The first that really matters.”
“That’s fair enough,” murmured
Margot. “But how unusual!”
“Perhaps I'm not the Turk, you
seem to think me, after all. A man
sometimes has an ideal, you know.”
“Well, of course, an ideal isn’t nec-
essarily permanent,” she admitted.
“I hadn’t really thought of you as
such a constant lover. Still—”
He looked down at her reproachful-
ly, and his voice had a wooing husk.
“Had you thought of me at all ex-
cejt as one more victim?”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” sighed Mar-
got. “You make me feel absolutely
carnivorous!”
An upper drawer of the desk stood !
: knows 7”
open ever so little, a bit of pasteboard
protruding carelessly. In that monk-
ishly ordered room it offended. Half-
unconsciously Margot put out a fas-
tidious finger and thumb, tucked the
pasteboard down, and tried to push
the door shut:
“Let me!” said Nicolls quickly.
Their fingers met on the knob. It
wast at best not a large drawer, and
perhaps Margot pulled where she
meant to push. In any case there was
a moment’s confusion, a slight rasp-
ing sound, a thick flutter of more
pasteboards than one, and suddenly
the drawer come open, spilling pho-
tographs all the way. There was on-
ly one thing the photographs had in
common—say, perhaps two. They
were all feminine—and they had all
been cut to the size of the silver
frame.
Margot stood with one hand on the
desk and laughed. After a moment
of intense potential awkwardness,
Nicolls joined her. She laughed till
the tears came into her eyes. His
mirth, while perhaps less whole-soul-
ed at first, was eventually no less en-
joyable.
She wiped her eyes at last and
turned away. “Shall I cut mine or
will you?” she inquired weakly.
“You’re an angel,” said Nicolls,
shoving the pictures back in the draw-
er and jamming it to with a grin.
“That’s all you are, a little, brown-
haired angel!”
“Qh, I rather like the thought of
being the first that really matters—
out of several dozen,” said Margot
sweetly. “It shows the most fascinat-
ing determination on your part really
to find the right one.”
But she refused that night to make
an engagement with him for the fol-
lowing afternoon. .
“You've forgotten,” she assured
him mildly, “that Mr. Garrett is hav-
ing us all for tea at his Tantalus
place, and one usually gets asked to
stay for supper under such circum-
stances. “You'll like Tantalus. It’s
the mountain back of the town, you
OW. : ;
That night Rosie Morrison wander-
ed into her house-guest’s bedroom, a
little before midnight, and spoke feel~
ingly of the unreliability of men in
general and of the Service in special.
She dealt at first in generalities, and |
Margot, brushing out her long and
lovely hair before the dressing-table,
responded politely but without mark-
ed interest, seeing which, Rosie aban-
doned suggestion and came out into
the conversational open.
“Jim Nicolls,” she remarked ab-
stractedly, “has been engaged to half
a dozen girls to my certain knowledge
—and it always fell through.”
“How embarrassing for the half-
dozen!” said Margot with an inde-
scribable softness.
Rosie sat down upon the bed, al-
though she had not been asked to do
so, and continued: “He couldn’t af-
ford to marry if he wanted to. He's
in debt, as well. I heard it tonight.
Rather badly.
about him—1I’ll admit it—"
“Rosie, has he been making love to
you, too?” asked Margot reproachful-
ly. She breathed a delicious sigh of
laughter.
“If he hasn’t, it’s only because you
kept him too busy,” retorted Rosie
good-naturedly. She added, after an
artful moment: “I was just thinking
of the difference between a man like
Jim and a man like Walter Garrett.”
“H’m’m!” said Margot sweetly, if
non-committally.
“Margot, think how pleased your
people would be, if you went back en-
gaged to Walter!”
“My stepmother in especial!—Oh,
Rosie dear,” said Margot, “the fatted
calves would overflow the place. Pleas-
ed expresses it mildly. She'd give an
eyebrow to get me out of the way.”
“Well,” said Rosie, “he’s just at the
place—if you ask me—where you can
either have him or lose him.”
“Nibbling, but not quite hooked,”
suggested Margot.
“Only,” warned Rosie thoughtfully,
“he’s got a puritanical streak, Walter
has! Don’t crowd him, my lamb. He's
apt to disapprove of something—Jim
Nicolls—or something—and go off in
the opposite direction before you
know it.”
“In which case I couldn’t very well '
run after him and beg him to come,
back, could I?”
“No-0—" said Rosie reluctantly,
“you couldn’t. So it might be just as
She |
well not to let him get a start.”
lingered in the doorway, having got
that far. “A little puritanism in a
husband, Margot, isn’t such a bad
thing.” :
“A little prosperous puritanism,”
accepted Margot smiling. “Don’t be a
cynic, Rosie dear!”
Nevertheless, she knew, and Rosie
knew, that the situation would take a
bit of handling. Walter Garrett had
not yet, as Rosie delicately suggested,
“declared himself.” And it was a dec-
laration that meant a good deal in the
matter of Margot’s future. She liked
him, or she would not have considered
him at all, but she sometimes wonder-
ed, with a touch of amusement at her
own sophistry, how much she would
have liked him in overalls with his
dinner in a bucket.
“Mercifully one doesn’t have to de-
cide that!” she evaded.
As for Nicolls, she turned back with
relief to the sheer sparkle and froth
of his fooling. He called her on the
wire two or three times a day, begin-
ning always with a wheedling drawl
which tipped up one corner of her
mouth in spite of her, “It’s been a
long time, Margot!” He would have
monopolized her entire schedule, if
she had allowed it. Which she retain-
ed wisdom enough to refuse to do.
She danced with him endlessly—they
were conspicuously good at it togeth- '
er—but in the welter of parties with
which Honolulu celebrated the stay of
that especial fleet, she tried, at least
half-heartedly, not to overlook Gar-
rett and his possibility of a claim.”
“Only Jim’s such fun!” she said
plaintively to Rosie.
She told him to his face: “I don't
know how I ever got along without
you, Jim! You are the paprika of
my days. I wake up sometimes in the
middle of the night and laugh just to
think of you.”
Nicolls said mock-gloomily, “I'd
like it a darned site better if you
stayed awake at night to think of me.”
“I dare say you would,” said Mar-
got. “Well, perhaps I'll try it. Who
That was at a second party of Gar-
rett’s arranging in his Tantalus. Sun-
set had come on by delightfully im-
perseptitle,, Sages, and fond a my
nority of the guests happily engage
about the bridge-table, while the mu-
sic-boys, singing on the broad lanai,
kept most of the others dancing.
Margot had slipped away to stand
under a great silvery-leafed kukui
and watch the day fade. Nicolls fol-
lowed her as a matter of course. Gar-
rett, looking up from his game, saw
them go, and a slight frown settled
between his eyebrows. From the big
house on the rising shoulder of the
mountain came yellow drifts of light
and the syncopated plaint of the mu-
sic, the sound of laughing voices and
the indescribable rustle of dancing
feet. Night was coming over the sea,
over the mountains, and slowly over a
silken, primrose sky. Far below, the
town sprang out in sudden radiance
of linked; pale stars that were the
street-lights. Diamond Head lay, a
still, gray shadow, drowsing in the
east. Along the west the Waianae
range darkened, a jagged line. In be- |
tween, the world fell sweetly away to
the sea, full of deep, fragrant shad-
ows, laved by a murmurous trade-
wind.
“It’s a great old earth!” said Nic-
olls suddenly. “D’y know, Margot, I
like it! I like you on it.”
“And I like you, old dear,” said
Margot dreamily. “Isn't it nice that
we arranged to let ourselves go and
Ike [each oingr with abandon, so te
5 ’s like running up a wi
account at a beautiful shop and know-
ing you'll never get the bill. Oh,
Jimmy, how Ertetul you Should be i
me, for supp you romance free o
charge, like this
“Aren't you getting any thrill out
of it yourself?” he objected tenderly.
“I quiver in the breeze of emotion,”
said Margot, “but luckily for you,
James, I'm my own stabilize izer. Let's
go back in the house and dance. If
we stay here and stare at the stars
coming out, no telling what may hap-
pen—and I don’t like to be kissed by
strange young men.”
There’s something
_—_—_T
! “Am I a strange young man ?—Oh,
Margot!”
got firmly, “for all practical purpos-
es
“And don’t you know I wouldn't |
y ‘manded of her, suddenly almost ser- !
kiss you unless you wanted me to?”
Margot stopped, inside a safe dis-
tance from the house, and looked over
her shoulder at him demurely.
actly what I was afraid of!” she
pointed out.
That night, Garrett approached the
matter of his affections, and Margot
put him off. If he had not selected
the same kukui-tree, with its same
shadowy view of the town and the
distant sea, she might have been more
amenable. Also, if he had chosen to
demand instead of suggesting, but his
pride had one foot in the stirrup,
ready to mount and ride of.
“I think you know,” he told her,
when he had her well away fron? cur-
ious eyes and ears, “how I feel about
such things. I believe any girl ought
to meet a man half-way. She owes
him that much, if she cares for him.
If she wants him to care for her, she
ought to give him a lead. It isn’t fair
that he should be allowed to ask, un-
less he knows she is going to say yes.”
“Yes, what?” asked Margot inno-
cently. Then Rosie’s warning mut-
tered in her brain and she caught her-
self up. “Surely—surely, you don’t
mean that a girl should let a man
know that she—cares—for him, be-
fore he has asked her?”
“She could give him a lead,” Gar-
“rett insisted stubbornly.
“After which, suppose he never
asked her?”
“A man has his pride.”
“Why, so has a girl,” said Margot,
smiling.
It was easy enough to hang a re-
prisal on that. She fought him with
delicate stubbornness. “Oh, but what
man would want a girl who let him
see?”
“Marriage isn’t a game; it’s a part-
nership,” said Garrett.
“Limited,” said Margot.
now ?”
In the end, he pinned her down to
something like an understanding.
| “You can’t help knowing what I
‘mean, Margot. I'm not much of a
“Isn't it,
wife happy. I’ve never asked any
woman to marry me, yet. When Ido,
it'll be because we both know—be-
cause she meets me half-way—"” He
broke off with a likable touch of agi-
tation. “Think it over, if you want
to. I won’t come to see you again,
i until you telephone or write me that
I may. Take until Wednesday.”
“Why Wednesday?” asked Margot
carefully. She remembered all at
once that on Wednesday the Fleet
was to sail.
“The Manoa goes up on Wednes-
day. There’s some business that
needs looking after in San Francisco.
If I don’t hear from you—"
“Quite strange enough,” said Mar- |
“Px. 1
talker, but I believe I could make my
i
“I could break you in my two hands,
you cold little thing!”
“Yes, but you wouldnt, would
you? Don’t be a cave-man! It isn’t
our type.”
y “What do you think I am?” he de-
ious—*“just a rotien male flirt? Hon-
estly, Margot?” :
“] think youre 2a professional
breaker of hearts,” said Margot air-
,ily. She added to prevent further dis-
cussion: “But I don’t like to talk
while I’m dancing. Haven’t you no-
ticed that yet?”
| Monday came and went like sum-
“mer lightning, filled with a dream-like
' gaiety, crowded with unessential fool-
,eries. Affairs that had been merely
ephemeral deepened into vast signif-
icance before the threat of approach-
; ing farewells.
“The Deane girl really considers
she’s engaged, poor lamb!” Margot
told Nicolls at a dance on the flag-
ship Monday night. “Why will wom-
en never learn to round off a thing
. like that gracefully? She's spoiling
it all.” ;
Nicolls objected with his endearing
grin: “After all, you know, there are
some Navy wives.” .
“You remember the boy who cried
‘Wolf!’ once too often,” Margot re-
minded him demurely. “The creature
got him in the end.”
She woke Tuesday morning with a
vague sense of something overwhelm-
ing ahead and lay remembering that
the note to Garrett had fallen due, in a
matter of speaking. She got out of
bed and wrote it, quickly and clearly,
“Please come.” That and not another
‘name on the envelope and left it ly-
ing on her desk.
| “After all,” she mused, “he’s ex-
actly the sort of man I’ve always in-
tended to marry. What could be
nicer 7”
| All of which occurred at about elev- |
en o’clock in the morning.
| At about eleven o'clock that night,
having in the reckless meantime
'lunched with Nicolls, teaed with Nic-
olls, and taken him shopping to buy
an embroidered kimono for his moth-
er, Margot hid her face in her arms—
she was lying on the sand of Waima-
nalo beach before a large and beauti-
ful bonfire—and groaned.
Nicolls lying at no great distance
with his chin propped on his hands,
his eyes somewhat moodily fixed on
| the flame, inquired briefly, “What's |
the matter?”
“Forgot to send a letter,” said Mar-
ot.
“Important 7”
“Very.”
“Want me to go back to town and
attend to it for you?”
“Jim, you don’t know how funny
‘you are!”
“Sorry. I didn’t intend to be fun-
H
Margot looked around the fire at
, word, on an undated card. Wrote his ;
UT
It was, perhaps, his last perfect move
iin a perfect game, to leave her osten-
' sibly still the adored one.
“Jim—" she said, “are you by any
| chance trying to become engaged to
me?’
“I am not,” said Nicolls unsteadily.
: “I've been engaged before, and noth-
ing ever seemed to come of it. I'm
- asking you to marry me, right now,
this morning. And I swear, Margot,
you’re the first woman I ever said
that to! I can lay that much, at least,
at your little white feet.”
| She did not look at him then, until,
' catching her cruelly close, he kissed .
her. At which she shut her eyes, for
that is a true tradition.
He said between kisses that blind-
| ed and dazed her: “You did for your-
| self, Margot darling, with your ‘im-
| placable memory’ last night. It went
“home like a knife.”
“Yes, didn’t it Jim!” she whispered,
choking back a sob.
Half an hour later on their way
down the steps to the license and the
, minister they met a small, bedraggled
| Hawaiian boy who wore his cap on
the side of his head and a drowsy
smile on his childish lips.
i “Messenger?” he inquired amiably.
“Lady telephoned.”
I Margot looked at him with some-
thing like panic in her eyes. Then
she drew a long breath and shook her
head. “You’re an hour late,” she said
—*“just an hour.”
' Nicolls put his hand in his pocket
and gave the servant of fate a dollar.
“Make any difference, Margot ?”
His voice still shook a little when
he looked at her.
i “No,” said Margot,
, wistfully cynical smile.
‘and me,
Lea.
smiling her
“Not to you
Jim!”—By Fanny Heaslip
NO DETOURS ON
SUSQUEHANNA TRAIL.
{ There are no detours on the Sus-
quehanna trail this spring. The State
Department of Highways has issued
a bulletin announcing detours on the
important highways and the Susque-
hanna trail is not in the lot.
: These detours are of interest not
only in the locality in which they
exist, but to the thousands of trans-
| Pennsylvania travelers who are al-
ready on the roads and who will
throng Pennsylvania thoroughfares
until snow flies in November.
Detours on important cross-state
roads are as follows:
| The Lincoln Highway—West of
i Downingtown, on route 142, in Ches-
| ter county.
| The Baltimore Pike—In Delaware
county, east and west of Media.
Sunbury-Scranton—Between
bury and Danville, necessitated by
, construction work near Danville.
This detour is over 20 miles in length.
| Wilkes-Barre-Mt. Pocono—On route
169, between Wilkes-Barre and the
Sun-
The inference touched Margot. She the other members of Rosie’s aloha Monroe county line.
felt that his fingers, holding her bare party, chiefly sunk in a murmurous '
arm to guide her up the slope to the
house, were cold and trembled a lit-
tle. His voice, too, had the shaken
note that no woman ever mistakes,
once she has heard it.
She told him impulsively: “I
wouldn’t hurt you for the world. You
have been very sweet to me. Only—
can’t you see? All a girl’s training
is against allowing a man to know—
what she may be feeling—until he .
asks her.”
If he had asked her in that mo-
ment—but he didn’t. He had the
stubbornness of a pride which fears
to fall.
“I'll be waiting for just a line to
say you want to see me. That’ll be
enough.”
Margot stayed awake late that
night, with the newest of the dance
tunes streaming through her head,
and decided to send that line. After
all, why pretend to herself? She had
come out to the Islands half-hoping
the solution of her life might lie there.
And the most exacting young woman
could hardly ask for a more eligible
solution than Garrett promised to af-
ford. She had already refused one or
two decent possibilities. She could
see her step-mother’s critical smile if
she came home empty-handed, so to
speak. It should be easy to love as
good a man as Garrett.
| “Pll send him a note Tuesday even-
ing, just saying, ‘Please come,’ ” she
determined. “Meanwhile—"
It was in that “meanwhile,” of
course, that slim, sharp hoofs and a
forked tail lay neatly concealed.
| Only four days to Wednesday! And
no delicate balancing between two
' chairs—meanwhile! Margot let her-
self go like moon-mad seventeen. She
danced, she swam, she dined, she
!drove, with an increasingly ardent
i Nicolls. She wore all her prettiest
| frocks with a wild disregard of con-
! sequences. Garrett's wife would have
: frocks a-plenty.
When Rosie remonstrated, she
laughed at her, kissing her soft,
smooth cheek and pulling the little
blonde curl at the back of her neck.
“Never mind, Rosie dear! This is
a swan-song. My life is settled. You
are going to see quite enough of me
in the next few years.”
“Do you mean you're engaged to
Walter Garrett?”
“Well, not just to say engaged,”
objected Margot cryptically.
“He’s a bigger goose than I think
him, if you are!” grumbled Rosie.
Sunday was a long, wild day at
somebody’s beach-place, on the wind-
ward side of the Island—hours in a
warm blue sea—hours on warmer yel-
low sand—the perpetual drone of the
phonograph—the recurrent lotus-
dream of dancing—Ilaughter that bub-
bled like golden wine. It did not seem
possible that life could be so young,
so careless, so shining!”
“Do you know, Margot.” Nicolls
whispered in her ear once, beneath
clangorous cover of a jazz record; he
drew her a little closer and tightened
his fingers on hers—“I’ll never for-
get this. I feel it.”
“Don’t get it before you sail-—
that’s all I ask of you,” Margot whis-
pered in return. She laughed up into
his beautifully reproachful eyes.
“Are you going to write to me,
Margot?”
“] am not. I always let the dead
past severely alone. Which : shows
you can trust me, Jim!”
“You don’t love me, Margot.”
“Would you like me to love you?
‘No entangling alliances, remember!”
‘and closely-grouped quietude. Then
{ she looked up at the moon, riding se-
i renely high, and smiled and sighed. |
| “I can send it the first thing in the
morning,” she said."
i Out beyond the fire, the sea lay
dark and mysterious, at the edge of a
shadowy strip of sand. The wind was
tedged with chill. Margot hunched
i herself a little nearer Nicolls’ reas-
‘ suring shoulder.
he said in a low voice.
“Tomorrow, this time,” she echoed.
She could see with an odd distinctness
the back of his neck. She did not
like men whose hair grew down like
that.
“What are you going to give me to
remember you by?” he asked her.
“A poem,” said Margot instantly,
“about you and me.” She did not
know why the lovely old words came
back to her. She began to say them,
softly:
‘ ‘Beside the idle summer sea
And in the vacant summer days
“Do you like it, Jim ?”
“Go on,” said Nicolls curiously qui-
et. “What’s the rest of it?”
She patted his sleeve with a little
laugh.
“ ‘Who has not welcomed, even as we,
That jocund minstrel and his lays
Beside the idle summer sea
And in the vacant summer days?
‘“ ‘We listened, we were fancy-free;
And lo! in terror and amaze
We stood alone—alone at gaze
With an implacable memory
Beside the idle summer sea,”
She had suddenly an odd fear of her
own voice when she had finished, and
got to her feet hurriedly. The last,
words had not been easy to say—
they had caught in her throat and
frightened her.
“Let’s go home!” she begged. “It’s
getting late, and I am so tired.”
It was half after eight of a fine,
cool Wednesday morning when she
called the Territorial Messenger Serv-
ice and asked them to send her a boy
—at once!
Thereafter she dressed slowly and a
trifle heavy-eyed. She had not slept,
and she hated herself for not sleeping.
What little sleep she achieved had
been riddled with dreams of Jim Niec-
olls, and she hated herself for that.
He came—as she had half-hoped,
half-dreaded he would—by nine
o’clock—an unheard-of hour for him
and for her. ;
In Rosie's long, shadowy drawing
room, with bowls of dewy yellow lil-
ies about, he caught her hand and
drew her over to stand by a sheltered
window-seat. She sensed an artistic
parting and lifted a smile to meet it.
“Margot,” he said abruptly, huski-
ly even. “I told you I was in debt—
and that any girl would be a fool—I
dare say, whatever I may have omit-
ted, somebody else came through
with.”
“You have been labeled Dangerous,”
conceded Margot, stiff-lipped. It was
an unexpected thrust that he should
find it necessary to go through with
such explanation again—explanation
or excuse.
“Well, it’s all true,” he continued
grimly. “So you can laugh at me if
you want to—only—Margot—I can’t
uit here! If there’s any chance in
| the world.” J
Margot did not look at him at all.
“Tomorrow, this time, I’ll be gone,”
the way Garrett’s hair grew down on!
Light Love came floating down the ways, :
Where you were loitering with me * *
Pittsburgh-Erie via Butler—Be-
tween Harrisville and Slippery Rock
on Route 73.
Reading-Pottsville—At Shoemakers-
ville, Berks county, on route 160.
| Harrisburg-Lancaster—For a dis-
tance of three miles from Middle-
town. This is a county detour, in bad
condition. It is suggested that trav-
el between Harrisburg and Lancaster
use the state road through New Cum-
i berland, York and Columbia to Lan-
caster.
Clearfield-Ridgway—On route 59,
fron DuBois to the Jefferson county
ine.
Coudersport to the Susquehanna
Trail—At the Potter-Tioga county
line; (2) west of Wellsboro.
In Tioga county, between Troy and
Mansfield. In Centre county there
are three detours, one at Millheim,
one between Millheim and Woodward
and one between Bellefonte and Hunt-
.ingdon. In Northumberland county
i there are detours between McEwens-
i ville and Turbotville at McEwens-
ville, at Turbotville and between Red
{ Cross and Mandata. In Sullivan
' county, at Eagles Mere.
ANIMALS ARE CHARMED
BY MUSIC.
| The Pied Piper of Hamlin was a
great fellow, but he didn’t have a
' thing on medical students of Philadel-
: phia—so the students say. They con-
tend that whereas the Pied Piper only
eparmed rats, they are charming dogs
also.
With a view of making definite
psychological tests of the effect of
music on animals, the rats and dogs
have been subjected to the music rang-
ing from modern jazz to Wagnerian
opera.
“As soon as the music started,” one
of the students explained, “the rats
stopped scampering and became very
jerky and excited. I also noticed that
the higher the pitch of music the:
more excited they became while
slow, soft music seemed to soothe
them.
“But my experiments with dogs
proved more striking. One dog howl-
ed until the music ceased while anoth-.
er fell asleep under its influence. It
would be difficult to draw any con-
clusicns from this, except that some:
dog natures are irritated by unusual
harmonies of sound while others re-
act pleasantly.”
The experiments also were carried
on with human beings as subjects. It
was found that Wagner's “Ride of’
the Valkyries” is a good antidote for
maniacal depressions.
The works of Chopin are recom-
mended for intense grief while a good
musical cure for nervous exhaustion
can be found in “Marldova of Someto-
va” by Grier. The solemn movements:
of the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Than-
ausses, is cited as an antidote for fur--
ious mania. 3 :
| “We are just beginning to under-
stand the curative powers of music,”
was the conclusion, “and there is no
reason why it should not be used more-
in medicine as a soother of human:
pains.”
Meeting Expectations.
The cheery caller tried to persuade:
old Aunt Martha not to dwell upon
her troubles, telling her she would
feel happier if she ignored them. ;
“Well, honey,” said the old lady, “I
dunno ‘bout dat. I allus "lowed when
de Lord sent me tribulation he done:
spec’ me to tribulate.”