=
Bellefonte, Pa., January 21, 1927.
VIEW POINTS.
What matter pray tell, if I'm Gentile or
Jew,
If I do my work well, and my purpose is
true?
‘What matter I ask, to which church I may
go,
If I do my full task,
know ?
What matter again, as to who is my neigh-
bor,
If duty is plain, in my own field of labor?
‘What matter it then, for which party I
vote,
If honor in men, is my choice to denote?
What matter my clan, or how I am classed,
If good is my plan, and upheld to the last?
What matter who sanctions, my life when
I die,
If fitted for mansions, of love in the sky?
—By J. C. Bateson, at Maryland Academy
of Sciences.
to the best that I
a eee meee.
SINGING WOMEN.
Elvina Rudd did not go forward to
welcome her stepmother. She just
stood in the open doorway of her fath-
er’s dilapidated house held together
by tough, ancient vines, and watched
him bringing her home. Never before
in the fifteen years of her lonely life
had Elvina known Cephas Rudd to
ride out from the Centre in a hired
vehicle. But up the winding, rocky,
weed-grown road came the station
wagonette, its engine coughing as the
heaves that had been the death of the
team it had replaced.
“Whoa!” shouted the wizened old
driver who had outlived his horses and
his day, setting his brake as the faint
tracks of the weed-grown road disap-
peared in the long, tangled grass of
Rudds’ front yard. “End o’ the line,
all-1-1 out! Weddin’ tower's over, heh,
heh!”
Enjoying his jest in his senile way,
for he had brought the Rudds direct-
ly from the courthouse, he proceeded
to unload his passengers’ baggage— a
trunk, a little trunk, two suitcases,
and a round leather box. Elvina won-
dered apathetically what the round
box was called, what it contained;
wondered with the part of her mind
that had not become paralyzed as she
stared at the wagonette.
Her father had got out of it. From
it he was assisting a woman to alight.
And within it sat a girl not much older
than herself! Evina was unprepared
for this pretty girl. She had not ex-
pected her. Indeed, through no words
of her father’s had she been prepar-
ed for his bride’s arrival. The news,
conveyed by gossiping neighbors, had
come to Elvina over the wires of their
telephone, which had been installed
after her mother had died, needlessly,
ten minutes before Cephas got back
with the doctor who could have saved
her. The phone was on a party line.
Elvina had been listening in. And
if that is a crime all good country peo-
ple are criminals.
“Heard the latest?” the neighbor
across to the north of her had asked.
“ ’Bout that music-show comp’uy
bein’ stranded last week at the Cen-
ter? Sure, I heard that,” the woman
i farms to the south had answer-
e
. “That ain’t the latest. The latest
is: Cephas Rudd married one o’ them
singin’ wimmen today.”
Elvina had listened no longer. She
had flung herself upon the couch, beat-
ing the dust from it with her bare
toes in a fury of resentment. She
had cried as she had not cried since
her mother’s death five years before.
Then she had eaten three pieces of
bread and molasses and had felt a
great deal better. Still she did not
feel like running forward and kiss-
ing her stepmother as she got out of
the wagonette,
“Elvina,” said her father, looking at
her commandingly, for he was a stern
man, and he never tried to disguise
the fact at home, “come say howdy to
your ma.”
“Ma’s dead,” retorted Elvina, with-
out moving more than her eyelashes,
thick and tangled like the grass. “I
ain’t got no ma, thanks. Ma’s dead.”
_ “This is your ma, an’ you'll treat
her like it,” announced Cephas Rudd,
advancing toward her.
Elvina did not cringe. She feared
him as she feared thunderstorms and
bulls. Yet she knew he would not
strike her. He never had. Though
she was often sullen when he was se-
vere, she had never offered him de-
fiance before. But she was his daugh-
ter, and the measure of his stubborn-
ness was hers.
“Now, Mr. Rudd, don’t!” begged
the new wife, catching him by his
heavy arm and squeezing it. At that
Elvina could not have kept her black
eyes in their sockets except for the
barrier of her tangled lashes. “Of
course, she don’t want to call me ‘“ma-
ma.” I don’t want her to, either. Mil-
ly never has. Be mama to such big
girls? Not me! Call me Tilly, hon-
ey, like Milly and everybody does.
What a sweet complexion you got!
Milly, Milly come look at this child's
white skin and yours’ll turn green.”
The pretty girl in the wagonette
laughed hilariously. “I’m parked here
till Papa Rudd lifts me out and leads
the way,” she declared, beckoning him
with two crooked forefingers. Elvina
gasped at her impudence. “I don’t
i a get lost in the impen’trable for-
est.
Cephas Rudd went back and extended
her his arms. With their aid Milly
floated to the ground.
“To-tumpty-ta, Methuselam,” she
called to the cackling old driver as
the station wagon, the bridal coach,
went jouncing down the hillside. “So
this is ‘home, sweet home.’ Well, it
couldn’t be any place else and get
away with it.”
“Now, Milly!”
“Oh, I'm keen as a crow about the
country, Tilly. Don’t the air smell
good? Like that pillow you used to
carry round in your trunk, that one
with ‘For you 1 pine, and, too, Ibal-
sam’ chain-stitched on it.”
“Yes, don’t it? And look at the
scenery!”
“Don’t talk about scenery or I might
get homesick.”
“No, you won’t, Milly. You and El-
vina’ll be such chums you’ll forget you
was ever on the stage. Already I feel
like I was back home on the farm
where I was raised, and hadn’t never
left it. Ain't Elvina white, like I
said 7”
“What kind of whitewash do you
use, Pierrettie? I'd like to buy a gal-
lon.”
“You can catch it in a rain-barrel,
I bet. Want we should just come
right in, Elvina, dear?”
With no sign of invitation or pro-
test Elvina stepped aside and let them
enter the dwelling that was as de-
pressing within as it appeared deso-
late from without.
“Supper ready?” asked Cephas
Rudd, blotting up the faint sunset
glow as he loomed in the doorway, the
two suitcases in one of his hands, and
on his back the smaller trunk.
“My, ain’t you strong!” exclaimed
Tilly Rudd, turning to look at him.
She removed her hat and ran her fin-
gers up through her colorless short
hair.
out a sturdy oak!”
“Set another plate, Elvina,” said
Cephas, noting that the table was
laid for three, but deigning to show
no surprise at the presicence which
had moved Elvina to arrange it so.
“Didn’t know you was luggin’ home
a singin’ woman to take my place,
too,” Elvina remarked dispassionate-
ly, crossing to the cupbeard to do as
she was bade.
Cephas did not answer. He never
did unless he had to. He went out
after the big trunk and round leather
box. And as there seemed nothing
for poor intruding Tilly and Milly to
say, they stood silently by the gloomy
twilight while Elvina added another
earthenware plate, another thick cup
and saucer, and another blackhandled
knife and fork to the array on the
faded red cloth that covered the small
table near the stove. After that, still
ignoring the newcomers, she placed
a coal-oil lamp in the middle of the
table, removed its pink shade and
shining chimney, and held a match to
the well-trimmed wick. The flame
shot up promisingly; and when she
slipped the chimney and shade back
into place, a warm ruddy light dif-
fused cheer into the barren room that
bod seemed so hopelessly dreary be-
ore, ©
.The new light showed them plainly
as they were, these three female crea-
tures who were henceforth to share its
rays. It shone on Elvina, a thin wo-
man-child clad in a shapeless cotton
garment; Elvina, a woman with im-
mobile features, a child with fear and
rebellion and distrust fluttering in her
eyes—these emotions, and nothing of
joyous expectancy that enlivens the
innocent glances of happy children.
It shone on Milly Larkin, her step-
sister, infinitely older, infinitely
younger, dressed in cheap, stylish fin-
ery, ready to make the best of what-
ever accommodations life had to offer,
even of these, poorer than those of
ihe Doorest hotel yet better than none
at all. x : 4
It shone on Tilly Larkin Rudd, who
counted it part of the luck which nev-
er failed her desperation that they
had been stranded in the Center,
where she had run across Cephas
Rudd, a boyhood friend of her dead
husband. When he had asked her to
marry him what else could she do but
thank him? Tilly was growing stout,
her voice was already husky, and each
disbanding company of her experience
was a little more tawdry and a littie
less supportable than the one before
it. And she had Milly io look out
for. By cautious inquiries she had
discovered the character of Cephas
Rudd; honest but glum, fair but cold,
well-to-do, having made money
“swapping” farms instead of farming
them, but close—a hard man to man-
age, Cephas Rudd would be. Never-
theless, Tilly Larkin had married him.
People in the show busines are innate-
ly hopeful and courageous.
On these three women, two young
and ignorant, one old and wise, though
she appeared quite girlish in an out-
size way, shone the white light El-
vina had placed on the table all laid
for supper.
Elvina’s stepmother spoke, as if
she had been thinking over the words
last uttered in that room. “Vinie, she
said, laying one hand lightly on a nar-
row shoulder that grew taut-muscled
under it, “a singin’ woman lights
things up around her like that lamp,
see?” She paused a moment, and
then went on. “I am a singin’ wo-
man, Vinie, off-stage as well as on.
I've learned Milly to be one, too.
And I'll make a singin’ woman out of
you, you poor, unhappy, little kid.
Your own mama couldn’t do no better
than that, I don’t reckon.”
“Ma never sung,” said Elvina, “an’
I don’t neither. Pa don’t like screech-
in’.
That was too much for Milly, with
her spirits revived by the lighted
lamp. “He don’t?” she cried, fling-
ing herself into a chair at the sup-
per table. “You'd ought to ’a’ seen
him in the bald-headed row the night
we closed!”
“Hush, Milly,” her mother admon-
ished her. “Men ain’t the same at
home as at shows.”
Cephas Rudd, having disposed of
the baggage in various corners of the
house, was washing his hands in the
basin on the bench outside the door.
Wetting his comb in the wash water,
he smoothed down his hair, hung the
comb back on its nail, and came in to
table.
“Set up,” he said to Tilly as he seat-
ed himself. “Bring it on, Elvina.”
“No, indeed!” protested Tilly,
smoothing his wet hair again with her
own venturesome hands. “I ain’t
comp’ny that Vinie should wait on me.
I'm gonna help her dish supper.”
Instead of looking grateful, Elvina
pouted. Were her privileges as mis-
tress of the house to be snatched from
her at once? !
“I'll fill the water glasses,” Tilly de-
cided hastily. “See here at this gourd
dipper, Milly. Aint it a big one?”
She had chosen the most trivial of
tasks, leaving Elvina to preside with
unimpaired dignity over the stove.
Tilly Rudd praised the viands for
their excellence, as she might have
for their simplicity. Then, when sup-
“This clinging vine sure picked
out shoes!
like her slippers, and unbruised. Still,
it
per had been eaten, she did an as-
tonishing thing. She pushed Elvina
and Milly toward the open door.
“Skip, you two,” she said, “and get
acquainted. I'll wash the dishes, and
Mr. Rudd’ll wipe.”
She began to sing the merriest of
gay songs and tossed a ragged dish-
towel to her husband. Did he let the
clean cloth fall to the rough floor as
Elvina felt sure he would? He did
not. He caught it. And dried the
thick, crazed dishes for his bride.
From the yard Elvina saw him.
“He didn’t tromp on it!” she ex-
claimed sharply, puzzled by the
strange acquiescence of her fearsome
father. What had changed him?
“Sure not,” said Milly knowingly,
as she got gingerly into the old rope
hammock. “Not tonight, I'll say!”
Elvina sat cross-legged on the
ground and watched the moon rise on
the world that had become so strange
and different since its last rising. She
had no intention of becoming friends
with this pretty girl who called her
father “Papa Rudd.” Her bare feet
burned as she looked at the dainty,
white slippers swinging in the ham-
I mock. How this fashionable actress
must look down on her for going with-
Her feet must be white,
they had said her skin was the whiter.
“Vine, you got a sweetie? Who's
that comin’ up the hill 2”
“Him? Oh, that’s nobody. Hen
Thompson. He lives on that farm
down there an’ works the garden for
pa.’
“Plants the taters in the dark of the
moon, does he?”
‘No,” replied Elvina. “No, he ain’t
never come of an evenin’ before. He
must of heard you was here.”
She could see him as he was, even
in the darkness—a tall boy with an
Adam’s apple. When she looked at
him he always tried, unsuccessfully,
to swallow it. An he had reddish hair
that straggled around a double crown.
“Is he good-looking ?”
“Yes,” said Elvina solemnly, laugh-
ing to herself; for she thought Hen
Thompson must be the funniest-look-
ing boy in the world. “Oh, my, yes!”
She wondered if Milly believed her, |
deceived by her words and the uncer-
tain moonlight. She was certainly
nicer to Henry than she had any call
to be.
“Come back again,” she said, when
he was leaving without ever having
explained why he had come. “Life
in the wildwoods won’t be so worse if
we got little neighbor boys like you
to play with.”
“Thanks, Miss Larkin. Thanks.
Yims, will your pa care?” Henry ask-
e
“Not if you sing to him,” Elvina
retorted crossly, thinking of the rag-
ged dishtowel upon which he had not
trampled.
For she could hear her stepmother
still singing, softly now, as she mov-
ed about unpacking her things in the |
downstairs bedroom. And Cephas
Rudd sat watching her. He had not
come outdoors to smoke his pipe, as
he always did on such moonlight
nights, while Elvina lay in the Hitm.
mock Milly had pre-empted. 5
When Henry had gone, Elvina turn-
ed on Milly, as she swung lazily and
caroled a light tenor to the throaty
soprano of her mother’s song. Elvina
was miserable. The moonlight was
different, her father was different,
everything was different and would
surely be worse, if it could be, now
that these queer city women had come
to toss up their noses at her and her !
ways, to live in her father’s mean :
house, despising it and her.
“When you women once start sing- |
in’,” she asked bitterly, “don’t you
never let up? What you got to sing
about? Nobody ain’t paid no ticket
money fur your show. What fur you
singin’ tonight 7”
“Cat’s fur to make kitten’s britches,”
Milly replied mockingly.
“What fur you singin’, I asked
you?”
From behind her Tilly answered,
clasping her hands under the quiver-
ing chin raised belligerently toward
Milly, and drawing the white face back
so that the moon and her own kind,
pleading eyes shone down on it.
“When women sing, it’s because
they're happy, kid,” she said. “Sure,
that’s why. Or else,” she added
strangely, gazing into the blackness
of the grove beside the house, “they
sing because it’s so dark they can’t
see very far ahead, but they want to.
scare the big old oak trees out of the
way of their happiness.”
“Them’s pines. An’ them trees
ain’t goona h’ist up their roots jest |
fur your singin’.”
“Sure they ain’t. But they’ll bend
their branches like I want ’em to, if
I sing right,” replied Tilly. “If I sing
right,” she repeated softly, looking
back at the doorway where Cephas
stood, a powerful, still figure black
against the lamplight.
He knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“Bedtime, Elvina,” he said briefly, and
sat down uopn the doorstep.
“Well, let’s hit the hay, Vinie-vine-
gar,” Milly suggested. “Comeé on,
Hard Cider. I like you even if you
have got a kick in you like a mule.”
She kissed Tilly and slapped Cephas
Rudd on his coatless shoulder as she
stepped past him into the house.
“Sweet dreams, Papa Rudd,” she
said, and laughed again in her care-
less knowing, little way.
Wordless, Elvina glided after her,
keeping a distance as great as she
could make it between herself and her
stepmother, between herself and her
father.
“ ’Night, ma,” she whispered at the
door of the downstairs bedroom.
Then she started up to the little
chamber under the eaves, to the little
bed which she had never shared be-
fore. Milly was ascending to it, car-
rying Elvina’s small glass lamp, mak-
ing herself amiably at home. But as
Elvina stumbled against the bottom
step, Cephas Rudd put his heavy arm
about her.
“G’night, Elvina,” he mumbled. “I
didn’t allus do jest right by your ma,
but I aim to do right by you.”
She felt his soft mustache against
her cheek. Pa had kissed her! Every-
thing was very different.
Three months later everything was,
indeed, except the one important thing
Elvina’s heart, That was unchanged,
still hardened against singing women
by whose coming she herself had so
profited. There were new dishes,
flower trimmed, in the cupboard.
There were ruffled curtains at the win-
dows, and grass rugs on the floor.
Tilly had sung them there.
“When a woman sings, it’s because
she’s happy,” she would say, as she
went humming about, doing twice the
work Elvina could, in half the time.
“Or maybe,” she would add, her gray
eyes twinkling mischievously behind
Cephas’ broad back as he walked down
the hill to the Center, “maybe it’s be-
cause she’s planning on how swell her
sewing machine will look, when she
gets it, right here by this south win-
dow.”
And when she had got the sewing
machine, she started at once to sing
a bigger machine, a shiny, black, tin
one, into the barn beside the cow she
had sung there already. Oh, Tilly
Rudd sang to good purpose as she
brightened up the cheerless home into
which she had married! But she could
not sing her way into Elvina’s hard,
little heart.
Elvina had grown up alone, a moody
child whose surroundings had foster-
ed a sensitive, melancholy spirit. It did
not please her to see her father buying
lavishly, to delight these strangers,
the things for which she had never
dared ask; of which, in her isolated
ignorance, she had scarcely even
known how to dream. Whatever Tilly
did for her she attributed to her de-
sire to do the same, impartially, for
Milly. Elvina was better dressed, bet-
ter fed, more comfortable, than she
had ever been in her life before. But
home was home to her no longer, and
she yearned with adolescent eager-
ness, inarticulately, to get away from
it, to go down the hill away, away, to
see the world of cities concerning
which Milly Larkin could talk so glib-
ly.
y What she wanted most, though she
did not realize it, was to escape from
, Tilly Rudd before she learned to love
her. Elvina did not want to accept
the woman who had taken the place
of her mother. Her poor mother! She
had known how to get things from a
stingy man without nagging for them,
| and she hadn’t been able to get them
that way. A little of that truth El-
vina sensed, remembering how ma had
sulked for days, trying to get pa to
have a phone put in. Poor ma! El-
vina. wanted to run away.
She wanted to, especially, the morn-
ing she broke Cephas’ meerschaum
pipe. It had been his pride for years,
and he was very angry.
“Looka here!” he said, shaking the
pieces in their faces as they seated
themselves around the breakfast tabie.
“Who busted this? Who busted it, I
say?”
“Not me,” volunteerered Milly,
cracking her egg. “I wouldn’t touch
the dirty thing with a ten-foot pole,
dead or alive.”
Elvina trembled and tried to
speak. She had been trying to con-
fess ever since she had knocked it
from its shelf.
“Why, Cephas, I reckon I musta
done it,” said Tilly calmly, putting a
warm hand over Elvina’s cold one.
“Not that I remember doing it, but
likely I did. I'm sorry, I declare I
am. But you can buy a new one. Sit
down and eat your fried cakes.”
“Don’t want any,” Cephas refused,
stalking off without his breakfast.
Elvina knew he was furious if he
wouldn’t eat. She wondered that even
he had said so little, feeling so much.
“Never mind, Vinie,” said Tilly.
“He’ll get over it if he lives long
| enough, which I hope he will.”
He had not got over it, however,
! when he came back home that night,
i late, after the supper dishes had been
washed, after Tilly and Elvina had
! gone to bed, after Milly had gone to
| bed, full dressed, had got up, and had
gone to bed again, breathless, after
Hen Thompson had slipped away
i through the dark and the grove.
: Cephas Rudd came into his unlighted
house in a mood as angry, angrier
! than the one in which he had left it.
{He flung back the door noisily and
i kicked a chair from his path as he
, Strode, heavy-footed, to the door of
| the stairway. It, too, he opened vio-
lently, almost tearing it from its
{ hinges.
“Come down here, you!” he shouted
up the well of the steep stairs.
Elvina and Milly had lain trembling
‘since Milly had climbed the stout
vines that shrouded the one small win-
dow of their room.
“Vinie, Vinie,” she had whispered,
tearing off her clothes frantically,
“your dad seen Hen and me neckin’ in
the grove. He stood halfway up the
hill and spied on us—I don’t know how
long. He didn’t come toward us, but
he seen us, I know he did. Cripes,
but I ran to beat him home! Let me
in bed, quick.”
Terror-stricken, Elvina clutched the
sheet, one of the new sheets that Tilly
had bought, refusing to sleep between
blankets. hi
“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she moaned.
“I told you, Milly, you'd oughtn’t to
sneak off an’ spoon with Hen this-
away. I knowed they'd catch you, one
time.”
“Can your I-told-you-so’s. They’re
over ripe, kid. What’ll I do, that’s the
question? Quick, what'll I do? There
he’s coming up the path. I ain’t
afraid of him. I ain’t his nigger. But
Tilly—good old Tilly! Hen and I ain’t
done nothin’ much, but I wisht I could
keep this Romeo stunt from her.
Cripes, he’s mad! Listen at him
raisin’ the dickens down there.”
Then—"“Come down here,
Cephas shouted.
“What on earth’s the matter, Ce-
pahs?” came Tilly’s warm voice.
“Wait, I'll bring a lamp.”
Tilly, good old Tilly! Maybe she'd
cry and not sing when she knew Milly
had sneaked off two, three, a dozen
times to spoon with Hen Thompson.
Whatever they called her, Tilly was
Milly’s mother. But that very morn-
ing she had lied for Elvina the same
as if she had been Milly. Elvina
could do as much for her.
“Lay still an’ keep your mouth
shet,” said Elvina, getting up out of
her bed and slipping her dress on over
her gown. “I'll fix pa.”
“How?” asked Milly eagerly. “Can
you? How?”
“Don’t you butt in. You got to
you!”
think o’ Tilly,” said Elvina. “Lay
still.”
Milly, thinking of Tilly and keep-
ing her mouth shut, lay still while El-
vina crept down the stairs.
“I’m here,” she said shortly. A
small figure, she faced her father
stonily. “What you want?”
“So,” said Cephas Rudd, sitting
down as if he were very tired. “So.
You was the one, was you?”
“What if I was?” asked Elvina,
shaking her black hair out of her
challenging eyes. “I ain’t done noth-
in’ much.”
“For goodness’ sake, Cephas,” in-
terposed Tilly, setting her lamp on
the table beside her husband, and
drawing her flowered kimono closer
about the elliptical curves of her un-
corseted figure, “what’s eatin’ you?
That old smelly pipe still?”
“ ‘Nothin’ much’ ?”” repeated Cephas
loudly.
you sittin’ on some feller’s lap, hug-
gin’ an’ kissin’ him!”
“Elvina ?” exclaimed Tilly unbeliev-
ingly.
been in bed since nine o'clock, and
sooner.”
“One of ’em ain’t.”
“Well,” said Elvina calmly, “what
of it”
She felt cold, frozen, like the ice-
cream Tilly had insisted on making
last Sunday with ice brought clear out
from the Center. The ice-cream in
her mouth had felt no colder than she
felt all over, inside and out. This
wasn’t her, standing here. It was just
a dish of ice-cream, waiting for pa to
eat it.
“ ‘What of it?’ she says, the little
fool! Who was he? Who was he I
say? I'll make him marry you or get
measured for his windin’ sheet.”
“Marry Hen Thompson? I won't,”
cried Elvina then, melting in her
fright. “I won’t marry nobody. I
won’t marry Hen! I won’t, she sobbed.
“Yeu won't? You will, or get out
of my house, you—you-—"’
“Now, you stop right there, Cephas
Rudd!” Tilly enfolded Elvina in her
arms and confronted her husband mili-
tantly. “Don’t you dare call our
daughter no dirty names she ain’t nev-
er even heard before. What for you
puttin’ on a East Lynne show, any-
how 7”
“Would you uphold that girl of mine
in spoonin’ like a—Ilike them loose
“ ‘Nothin’ much’ when I seen
AiR ET stay,
“when a woman sings like that, she’s
happy. Or she’s hiding something
from somebody. Only when the some-
body’s her mother it can’t be did.”
“She knows I didn’t hug an’ kiss
Hen,” thought Elvina swiftly. “That’s
why she’s sendin’ me to boarding
school. So’s she can send Milly away
from Hen.”
But aloud she only said, “I wisht I
could sing like she can, higher'n a
bird.”
“Try,” said Tilly, going back to her
wash tub. “You never know how
grand you can sing till you try.”
“Be back and help finish in a little
while,” cried Milly, putting her bobbed
head in at the open door, as there fell
upon the air the loud and rhythmic
sound of a sturdy engine. “Here's
Hen, come to take me to the Center
to shop, like I called him up and ask-
ed him to.”
“I didn’t hear you,” said Tilly
‘ amazedly. “While I was at the barn 2°”
“Why, Cephas, the girls ‘ve!
“Yes!” Milly called back.
“Take Elvina, too!”
Tilly dried her hands on her apron
as she hurried to the door. But Milly
had gone. For the rest of that morn-
ing the Rudd house was very quiet,
except for the minor and intermittent
humming of Tilly as she washed and
ironed and baked. In the early after-
noon, however, Milly returned, her
arms loaded with packages, and Tilly’s.
relief burst forth palpably.
“You come back!”
“Sure, did you think I'd eloped?
Look what I bought.”
Admiring and exclaiming, Elvina
and Tilly opened the bundles, and
their contents were divided by two.
That Papa Rudd’s money had slid
from Milly’s buttered fingers to pur-
chase these garments did not occasion.
Elvina a single pang. This was get-
ting ready to go to boarding school!
Early Thursday morning everything:
was packed, the little trunk and suit.
case with Elvina’s clothes, the larger
trunk and suitcase with Milly’s, the
round leather box, which Elvina had
viewed with such curiosity a few
months before, with their joint supply
of hats. Cephas Rudd was to take
them to the city and the school Tilly
had selected for them to enter. She
had made arrangements for their ma-
triculation, capably, over the long dis-
tance phone. While Cephas was gone,
Tilly was to stay at home to look after
girls in that show o’ yourn? What | the cow she had sung into the barn.
kind of a ma might I ’a’ knowed a
| singin’ woman would make for Vinie!
. Hell!”
“Cephas,” said Tilly Rudd, quietly,
i “talking wild ain’t worth while. We
. made our bargain with our eyes open,
: give and take. We ain’t neither of us
‘done so bad. You got to treat Elvina
i square; that’s the main thing now.
| Maybe you seen ’er kissin’
Hen, |
though I myself couldnt believe it
lest I seen it with my own eyes. But
what if you did? When you was nine-
‘teen or twenty, didn’t you never kiss
no girls without there bein’ no ecail
for you to marry ’em? Think back
oletime, think back!”
Cephas Rudd surveyed his wife
thoughtfully, a queer peace coming
jover him. “A few,” he said, faintly
smiling behind his soft mustache. “A
few. The rest wouldn’t ’a’ cried about
havin’ to marry me. Go to bed, Vinie.”
“She’s going to bed,” declared Tilly,
leading her toward the stairs. “And
that ain’t the only place she’s going.
I been thinking about it ever since I
came, only I been too selfish to want
to let them go. Cephas Rudd, her and
Milly are going to boarding school and
get an education. That’s where they're
going.”
Elvina paused on the stairs, her lit-
tle hands clasped tightly, palm to
palm. To boarding school! Oh! She
was going away to a boarding schooi!
“Huh?” grunted Cephas interroga-
tively, looking up as he sat leaning
over unlacing his shoes.
! “That’s what I said. This very
week, too. Thursday. That’s what.”
“You think I'm made o’ money, that
I should have three rocms built on
like I promised you, buy you a play-
er, an’ send them girls to school, all
this fall?” asked Cephas, padding
stocking-footed toward his bed-room.
“I ain’. Turn over, Tilly. You're
dreamin’,”
! “When the girls are gone,” said Til-
But as Cephas drove around to the
front and started to load the baggage
in the shiny car he had acquired since
the day he drove his new wife home
In a hired wagonette, another car
with a sturdy engine came up the:
weed-grown, rocky hill.
“Milly,” called Elvina, standing in:
door way, “here’s Hen Thompson,
come to tell you good-by.”
“No, he ain’t,” said Milly, watching
the tall red-headed boy come timidly-
but bravely toward the house, “He:
ain’t come to tell me goodby. Tilly,
Tilly :
Running into her mother’s arms
Milly began to cry. ?
“There,” said Tilly evenly. “There,.
now, honey. When was you married 2’
“ That day you went to the Center ?
1 thought So. “Well—Come in, Hen.
Wait with them trunks, Cephas. There:
honey, there now.
ly sweetly, picking up the lamp and
i padding after her husband, “we won't
need no more room. And after all,
why should we buy a player when we
scan maybe pick up a second-hand
{ cab’net organ for a song?”
Singing under her breath, she
!
smoothed with a proud hand the:
rumpled sheets from which she had
sprung when her husband returned.
i “You can blow that lamp,” he said.
: Toward the darkness that covered
| them, Elvina, crouching on the stairs,
sent a happy sigh.
Story No. 6.
“ "Night, pa and Tilly,” she whis-
pered. “Ma, she’s gonna make him
send us to a boarding school!”
Milly, however, did not receive the
news so jubilantly when it was told
her in the morning.
“Cripes, Tilly,” she said, pushing
her chair back from the table with an
irritated shove, “me go to a boarding
school when I'm almost in my second
childhood? Just when I've got used
to the country and like it like I pre-
tended at first, you route me back to
the sidewalks.”
“Why, Milly,” said her mother, look-
ing at her penetratingly, “when we
was on the road you was all the time
wishing to go to school and all such
like.”
“To a co-ed school, yes, maybe. T
never wanted to get no closer to a
boarding school than I got readin’
boarding-school books, though—all
about robbing pantries and climbing
up and down outa second-story win-
dows,” she finished irrepressibly, with
a sly kick at Elvina.
After that she was very silent for
an hour or two. And then, as though
to cloak the silence she had created,
she sang a great deal over everything
she did.
“Elvina,” said Tilly, puting a hand
on both of Elvina’s shoulders and
looking into her wide eyes that glowed
with the excitement of the prepara-
tions for the coming exodus, “Elvina,
when a woman sings like that—" she
motioned with her head toward Milly,
pinning wet stockings en the line—
‘and again.
Not even remembering that she had
on a new silk dress and patent leath-
er pumps, Elvina sat down on the:
doorstep. So Milly was married.
Then they wouldn’t be going to board-
Ing school. It was all over, the won-
derful dream. And she had so yearn--
ed to see something of the world’
spread out at the foot of the hill
They’d build three new rooms on the
house and buy a player. When oh, she:
did want to go to school!
“Come now, Milly. Hen’s a good’
boy. You got a good husband, if you.
wanted to be a farmer's wife, even if’
I didn’t want you should marry so-
voung. And you’ll be living right next.
door, almost, where we ean borrow
back and forth, see?” Tilly was a
very brave woman ' that day of her
disappointment. “Dry your eyes and’
get out your compack. Vinie, run
find some rice an’ old shoes! It’s all
right, honey. Mama’ll sing ‘Here Goes:
the Bride’ for you, while Papa Rudd
and Hen load up your things. Listen,
mama can still sing: you’d oughta be
able to!” .
“Oh, mama!” cried Milly. “Oh,
aint ’you the world’s best mama!”
“She sure is,” agreed Hen devout-
ly, swallowing something in: his throat
that seemed to bother him more than
his Adam’s apple. He drew Milly out
to the bridal coach. “She sure is!”
“Not the hat box,” said Tilly, as she:
kissed her daughter good-by again
“Wait, Hen. Get your
‘hats out, Milly. Leave the hat box..
Elvina’s to take that!”
Story No. 7.
Elvina stood still in the doorway,
trembling as she heard, Then Tilly
; still meant to let her go to boarding:
. school! Good old Tilly!
“Ready, Vinie?” asked Cephas
Rudd, seated at the steering wheel of’
his car wherein a suitcase, a trunk,
and a round leather hat box were pil-
ed for a journey. “I'll get back soon’s
I can, Tilly:™
Elvina walked slowly out to her
stepmother, who stood smiling and
waving her apron in response to the
colored handkerchief fluttering from
the car jouncing down the hill, Tilly
turned her bright, tear-wet eyes to-
ward her stepdaughter and held out
her arms. Straight into them Elvina
walked.
“Mama,” she said, “now Milly’s
married, I'd liefer stay here at home
with you. You'll be lonesome, maybe.”
Tilly Larkin Rudd smiled radiantly,
wiped her eyes, and shook her head.
“Mamas like to have their daughters
get married,” she said. “But mamas
like to have their daughters go to
boarding school better. It don’t seem
so—fatal, somehow. I want you to go,
like’s best for you, honey. It don’t
make no difference if I'm lonesome.”
Her arm about Elvina, she put her
beside her father.
“When you're gone I'll sing the
Doxology for you callin’s me mama!”
she said. “When women sing, they're
happy. Or leastways they ain’t afraid
to stand up and face their lot with
songs and smiles. Some sing hymn
tunes, some sing jazz tunes. Don’t
(Continued om page 7, Col. 3.)