Brusca alr,
1927.
Bellefonte, Pa., July 15,
SP ——— —
TASKS.
It matters not so much what work I do,
as that 1 bring to something all my
best.
Those who may choose their task are few,
so few there needs must be some an-
swer to the rest.
There are so many lives
wings, S0 many eager
with hope
Ground dustward ’neath the heel of Little
Things, or set through blinded alley-
ways to grope.
with broken
souls aflame
For one must sit and tend the glowing
peat, and shut his heart to spring
winds calling wide.
And one must walk the world on wistful
feet, who longs for home and flame-
sweet chimneyside;
And one must lead who rather would be
led, and one must follow who might
master be,
And one plods down a furrow who instead
might thrill a world with new-born
artistry.
And so I think it can not matter much
just what it is my hands are called to
do.
If brooms or palette proffers to my touch,
or dear or drab the highway lies to
view.
For I believe that He who wove for each,
upon His loom, one silver thread
agleam,
Shall read his heart beyond the need of
speech and set his feet at least on
Paths of Dream.
By Martha Haskell Clark.
CANDLELIGHT INN.
A little lady with a man-sized suit-
case gave us the road and a wistful
glance, for which Bill gave her, in re-
turn, a fugitive view of a Denton
straight masqueradin’ under the mud
of forty-seven States, a glimpse, if
she was spry enough to read it, of his
rear placard, “Torpedo McGowan, All-
Capital Speed Run,” and a taste of
his dust. “Lady wanted a lift!” I pro-
tested.
“Hell—is this a bus service between
villages we’re running?”
“Bill,” says I, “you’re
chivalry.”
“Rudy,” says he, “I'm lacking in
time. If we're to reach Augusta,
Maine, which is a hundred and seven-
ty-two miles from here, in three
hours and shake hands with the re-
ception committee that’s waiting up
for us, we've got to keep hitting it.”
“Do we eat?” I sighed.
“At Augusta.”
“Bill, this speed fever is getting
you; you’re missing a lot in your life,
Bill—
“Dinners ?” he scoffs.
“Love,” says I seriously, “and the
finer things.”
lacking in
“Love! That sounded like a
sprin if
“It felt like a rub,” I groaned.
“You know about Blondie Dillon and
a few other little gold-diggers. You
ought to meet Molly, Bill; and there’s
other girls in this old world like Molly
—girls as fresh and as uncalculating
as morning strawberries.”
“Show ’em to me!” spat Bill.
His profile—what was visible of it
below goggles—was just a grim skir-
misher for coverin’ the road ahead:
blue eyes squinted, bony nose lifted.
and level mouth set to the charge on
the advancing miles. Bill’s face has
the double hardness of uncempromis-
ing youth and Scotch framework.
Even the brick-red of his skin was a |
baked-in-the-grain coloring, hard,
somehow; while the pair of deep, ver-
tical furrows in his lean cheeks, dug
into the tough skin like ruts in a hard
clay road, didn’t soften the effect.
Bill was on the last lap of his latest
spectacular run, in which the stunt
was to touch the capital cities of each
of the forty-eight States in the brief- |
est possible running time. He had set
out to beat Cannonball Baker’s 1918
record of eighty-three days at the
wheel, and had succeeded, too; hav-
ing only a few more hours te go, he
would slice three days and some hours
off that old record. But with the vic-
tory cinched, did Bill let up? Not he!
Just from pure speedmania, he had
driven the last forty-four hours
straight without sleep. There was no
reason at all why he shouldn’t stop
and get a night’s rest and dash into
Augusta in the morning, since the
halts didn’t count, anyhow; instead
of which, he had wired the company
at Concord, N. H., which we had just
left, that he would reach Augusta,
Me., not later than ten-thirty this
same August evening.
I’d better explain that I was a mere
passenger. I'd met Bill at Hartford
in the morning, and was doing this
final stretch with him for “auld lang
syne.” In the old days Bill and I had
made some two-man relay records to-
gether, but, being a family man now,
I'd given up the racing business and
was selling cars. As a matter of fact,
I had the agency for this same stock
car that Bill was putting through its
paces; further, this particular ad-
vertisin’ dodge was my own idea—I’d
suggested it and recommended Bill to
the company.
Bill’s qualifications for almost any
racing job were first-rate. At twen-
ty-eight
meteor of the motor world,” was
known to every speedway in the coun-
try; he made thirty-four transconti-
nental runs; he had covered these
United States, at record paces, from
San Diego to New York and from
Chicago to El Paso. He gathered
medals and loving-cups, and checks
from automobile-makers, and a re-
pertoire of cussing words from every
State in the Union, and impressions
of quick lunches varying from chile
con carne in Texas to bean hole
beans in Maine. He developed a sixth
sense for motorcycle cops—developed,
also, a technic toward the cops, his
methood being to take full advantage
of that clause of the law which states
that you have to catch a speeder in
the act but once caught, simply to
post the amount of bail demanded to
cover appearance in court and then to
drive on at the same clip as before.
Talk about hard-boiled and veteran
mile-eaters! All those exaggerated,
serious, and humorous articles in
magazines labelled “Forgotten Fire-
side,” “On the Road to Eleswhere,”
“Pike's Peak, Lizzie, or Bust,” etc,
fall short of the obsession that was
Bill’s. Bill’s was the speeding spirit
of ’26, intensified, and exaulted to the
dignity of professionalism. To Bill
himself cometlike motion had become
so necessary that he couldn’t comfort-
ably light a cigarette out of the wind.
and he felt exposed without his gog-
les.
E 1 was reflecting on these character-
istics of Bill and how he had no ca-
pacity for romance—feeling at once
superior to him and irritated by him
as a married man does at the immun-
ity of his bachelor friends—when we
tumbled right into romance. The
twilight had melted into a warm, safe,
cherishing kind of darkness, and only
Rill’s powerful headlights sweeping
the dirt road before us spoiled the
illusion that we were all little human
canaries, being covered over by a big,
kind hand for the night. “Those
lights,” 1 grumbles to Eiil, “are too
bright to be legal.” And at that in-
stant, as though the lights were sen-
sitive to criticism, the road blew out on
us, and we were doing a mile a minute
didn’t last long. 1 closed my eyes,
and said “Amen” to my life, felt the
swerve, the gritting of brakes, the
curiously soft brush of our impact
with something through all my extra
pounds of flesh.
1 opened my eyes to the ominous
and significant sensation of smother-
ing. But I was wrong; I was still this
side of that hotter place. Having ex-
tricated ourselves from the under-
brush, we found that fortunately we
were undamaged, and the car, under
Bill’s flash-light, was, miraculously,
also undamaged. Bill swore in all his
American dialects. Then he set to
work. Now Bill travels fully equipp-
ed for trouble; he had extra bat! cries,
and he was a good amateur e.ectri-
cian. But apparantly this trouble
called for an electrician who had
taken his Ph.D., and seen service.
We stepped back to the road. But
having temporarily left the main
highway in the process of cutting
Portsmouth and some miles off our
route, we found that night traffic on
this lesser road was nil. Even houses
seemed to be missing along here. So
it was almost startling when, tramp-
ing around a curve, we came abruptly
upon one of those fine old Colonial
farmhouses, built in an L, and all lit up
as though for a party. Even the win-
dows held lighted candles, like it was
Christmas Eve and they were put
there to guide the Christ child on his
way. But the strangest thing of all
was the absolute silence of the house
—a quiet as deep as the quiet of this
peace-enchanted land—deeper, and
with a peculiar hush quality of it’s
own.
“What the hell—?” breathes Bill.
“If it’s Big Doings,” says 1, “the
guests haven’t come yet.” We were
both speaking in tones suitable for
church.
But just then Bill discovers the
sign; it was one of those hand-tooled
affairs, lovingly made and it read:
“Candlelight Inn”. Rest fer Tourists.
“Meals.”
Now we were familiar with every
form of bait for tourists, from “See
Polly and Molly, the Berkshire
Bears!” to “Stop! We Serve a Meal
in Each Sandwich or Mcney Back!”
This sign had a quiet, modest sound.
“Darn fool spot for an inn,” says
Bill, “but come on—"
{ “Pl bet,” I yearns. trailing him,
[ “that you’d get one bully farm dinner
{in this joint.”
{| The brick walk was bordered with
marigolds. The whole front yard
{ must have beer a riot of nasturtiums
{by a stronger light, for the smell of
(them was so vivid that you could tell
i they were as enthusiastic about just
covering ground as Bill was about
I covering miles. Standing under the
| fanlight, I shuddered when Bill vio-
{lated the silence of the house by mak-
ing the bell peal through it. Noth-
{ing happened; just quiet, and the
i light from all those candles blossom-
‘ing on the darknees, and the damp. |
isharp smell of nasturtiums. Bill
| swore, pealed again. A door shut
i somewhere; there came a soft pad-
‘ding. together with a crisper running
i sound of feet. A chain was drovped,
the door was opened a crack. “Tour-
lists?” entreated a light, breathless
| voice.
“Yes”
“Oh! I didn’t hear you—!”
door was flung wide to us.
It was that summer of flowered
{coats and strike-me-dead purple
| dresses zoological ornaments, execut-
ed in brilliants, on hats: styles which
had invaded even the rural districts
and which were perpetrated even by
the female children. To meet a lady
wearing red roses and green parrots
rampant on her coat and a diamond
pussy-cat with a humped back on her
hat, gave you no shock—no shock at
all. But having grown accustomed
|to a bright and sparkling woman-
hood, I found I had to look twice to
i see this pale little sprite of a crea-
ture. She wore a pink dress—not
French nude or any of those new-
fangled shades. but just old-fashion-
ed pink, faded from regular old-fash-
ioned washings: her face had the deli-
cate russet flush of an hydrangea, and
The
springing down over her shoulders.
But, somehow, these definite mortal
characteristes of dress, coloring, hair,
didn’t anchor her at all. The strong-
est impression I got of her was that
she was as light and slight, as insub-
stantially and breathlessly imploring
of something, as her own voice. She
was like a rudderless slip of a sailing
dinghy, beseeching your help yet as
committed to the following of her own
breezes—breezes which you couldn’
feel, and which might or might not
carry her your way—as any wistful,
touch-me-not young girl is committed
to the following of her own unac-
countable moods. She looked to be
about fifteen. A dog, a white-and-
brown spaniel with great sad brown
eyes and sadly hanging brown ears,
folded his stump of a tail under him
treaty.
The breezes were our way. The
| girl, with a little gasp, was blown up
her dark hair was long and loose,.
“Torpedo (Bill) McGowan, 8 rs al 2
and docilely sat, backing up her en-
in a totally black veid. Naturally, it | —/
against Bill and actually caught onto : “That one’s for a thermos bottle; ‘in dreamland with his crushed pillow at us.from that terribly quiet room.
his coat sleeve, while the spaniel
hunches up, too, and crowds against
Bill’s leg. “I'm glad—so glad—-!”
“ 'S all right,” said Bill, staring;
“you didn’t hear us come, because we
got hung up in a straw stack. If we
can use your ’phone—”
“No ‘phone,” murmured the girl;
“we have no phone. There’s no tele-
phone near. But if you'll wait—
something to eat?” The child’s eyes,
clear gray water takes the reflections
of trees, held shadows of pain; I had
never before seen such confusion of
tragedy in any young eyes.
“No time,” said Bill. “It’s trouble
with the lights; we've got to get them
fixed and be on to Augusta. Where's
the nearest garage?”
“West Hero is the nearest town.
Six miles.”
“If you've a car of any kind—"
“We—I have nc automobile.”
“Or a horse?”
“No horse, either.”
“But goed Lord, how do you get to
town yourself?”
“We—I] never go to town.”
“We »
“My—my father and 1.”
“Jf I can see your father?”
“No! You can’t see him—not now
”
“Other cars must pass here; we’ll
' hail one—"
“Besides, it’s Sunday night and no
garage would be open.”
Bill glared at her with the look of
giving his horn to a fellow that re-
fused to get over to his own side of
the road. “Hells-bells,” says he,
“then we’ll drive without lights.”
“I’m not yet fixed,” says I, “so’s I
can afford to commit suicide.”
“Fried chicken and mashed pota-
the girl, “beans in
corn, peach
toes,” breathes
butter, golden bantam
pickles——"
The contrast of big, grim, red-skin-
ned, and dust-caked Bill McGowan
frowning down the pitiful but potent
little bait of this flower-like young-
ster like it was a song of the sirens
was funny. But suddenly Bill slack-
ened and caught at the doorjamb;
forty-four hours of sleeplessness and
Heaven knows how many hours of
snatched meals were beginning to tell
on him.
“We'll have that dinner, all of it!
Afterward, we'll talk about Augusta,”
I pronounced.
“But, Rudy, that reception commit-
tee—"
“Hang the reception committee;
and remember, Bill, the time when
vou’re not running doesn’t add any
hours to your record.”
“If you like the dinner,” insinuated
the girl, flickering back to us, “if you
find it comfortable and—cheerful—
here, you might stay the night; others
have sometimes stayed the night.”
Bill swore.
I shifted my two hundred pounds
onto Bill’s right instep and hissed: |
“In the presence of ladies, you
blighter!” And becoming suddenly
conscious of stiff legs, a tired spine,
a back rubbed raw, and a soreness as
though my two wing points had punc-
tured my shoulders. TI said to her:
“We might do just that.”
it’s not—finished yet.” She turned
| abruptly from us to the window, ex-
amined the outer darkness.
| Bill's eyes narrowed on her; he fin-
ished the hunk of cake he had carried
from the table with a mumbled “Darn
good frosting.” I noted it because it
was unusual for Bill, in his rapid
transits over the country, to give at-
tention to anything so trivial as the
frosting of a cake.
Jessamy began whiffing out the
candles about the room and Bill join-
ed in. He showed her how to snuff
them out with her fingers, and they
made a lively game of it. But the
lights of a passing automobile, reflect-
ed, for a moment, on the mahogany :
surface of an old cabinet jerked Bill
back to the business at hand. “Heigh,
Rudy, hail them! Cripes, man, why
couldn’t you have moved? Get out
there and flag the next—"
I gave Bill a strong, sensible argu-
ment for resting here overnight; Jess-
‘amy came in with breathless little
pleas. Bill almost bowled me over
by admitting that it might be best.
“But we'll be on our way,” he threat-
ened, “at first bird-peep!”
Jessamy was incoherent with grat-
itude to Bill. I was satisfied, too—I'd
a kind of hated to leave the kid after
her coaxing. Besides, I was down-
right curious to meet her father;
Jessamy, the whole house, was warm
with his personality, and it was a
pleasant warmth.
The youngster stuck fast to Bill
when he went after the car and ne-
gotiated it back to the inn, with the
'flash-light. 1 smoked a pipeful on the
. owed its comfortable sag to the weight
of my host’s body. The notion struck
ime that the personality of the bas-
ket-maker had something to do with
the peculiar thrill of quiet that per-
.vaded this house: a quiet with a sur-
face shiver to it, but with a depth
lof calm, still beauty. Curiosly, I lost
my impatience to meet the man, and
was content just to sit.
Bill and the kid, who now settled
on the steps below me, did a running
accompaniment to my content. Jess-
amy, from sitting tautly upright, laps- |
ed against Bill, dug a hand into his
| coat-pocket with a gesture habitual
| with her father, no doubt; she con-
i fided to him her little shiverings of
I the flesh, her stray thoughts. Bill,
| for all hard-boiled bachelor wariness,
| took her easy, like the kid she clearly
| was.
“_But if you needed something—
| and if you c-couldn’t go to West Hero
{ for it?”
“My dear child” said Bill blithely,
“if T needed postage-stamps or pow-
| der for the hose from West Hero, I'd
{hop right down and buy it. I'd never
ner a burg like that with my prej-
' udice.”
“You wouldn’t if West Hero had
| talked about your mother until she’d
‘killed herself! Because she was
| young—so many years younger than
| father—and because she was so love-
| ly that they were jealous of her, they
| made up stories about her. Father
says the things they told about her
The girl's name was Jessamy Rusk. | were not true—could not have been
Mr. Rusk didn’t materialize during true.
Father said we would not poi-
dinner, but we gathered—not so much [on ‘our own minds by hating West
from anything definite she said as
from her precipitate little evasions
and the evidence of his spectacles on
the table and his pipe on a chair arm
that her father was temncrarily
away ard would return shortly. We
gathered too that her father’s ab-
sence was unusual. That strained
something in the kid’s manner. even |
the trouble in her eyes, could be ac-
counted for bv her natural nervous-
ness at being left alone after dark.
The child was competent—a fever-
ich little whirlwind in the kitchen.
But she wondered whether I would
rump her a pail of water and whether
Rill would turn the chicken in the
skillet while she did all the other
things. “There’s iust vou and your
father?” asked Bill. kind of dazed
to find himself with a fork in one
hand.
“Yon”
“He’s no business to leave you!
alone, with an inn on your hands.”
“He can’t h-help!” she gulped; she
resented, to the point of sudden tears,
Bill’s criticism of her father. “Be-
sides, no one comes. I'll tell you a
| secret,” she laughed, and her gaiety
was like a fresh bubble she blew
which might break any instant; “I lit
all the candles on purpose, hoping
some one would come. I'm glad you
came! If you hadn’t come—” She
shivered herded us to the table.
We ate, we praised. Jessamy rush-
ed into a bright little explanation of
how everything was grown on their
own farm. Even the candies and soap,
some of the furniture, the hooked rug
with the two black pussies, were home
made. They grew their own broem
corn and made their own brooms; her
shoes—she stuck out a sandalled foot
to show us—were made by—by her
father.
“But why?” gasped Bill.
“Because we’d rather depend upon
ourselves alone. We're like one of
those feudal estates in history, and
we have fun, father and I, trying how
long we can go without any help from
outside.”
“History—then you do
school,” Bill scowled.
“No. The nearest school is in West
Hero. Father teaches me history;
father teaches me everything.” The
bubble was bright again; from having
overcome her reluctance to speak of
her father to a critical stranger, she
seemed unable to speak enough of
him. “Of course some things we have
to have from town, but we go always
clear to Sanford, never to West Hero.”
“Why the boycott on West Hero?”
asked Bill.
But the kid suddenly closed. They
bought nothing from West Hero,
though West Hero bought baskets
from them. The two Misses Haines,
who sold her father’s baskets in their
gift shop, were the very ones who had
—Of course no one else in the world
could make such beautiful, strong bas-
kets as her father made. Would we
see them?
There were picnic-baskets and flow-
er baskets, a variety of fine, sturdy,
graceful shapes woven from smooth
white maple splints. A wash-tub
held more of the splints soaking.
“What's this?” asks Bill.
go to
| the words “Peace Be Still”......
Hero, but we would stay away from
‘there. He said it was safer for me
never to set foot in West Hero. But
i he—didn’t tell me what to do if—-"
She took up Bill’s old cap and pulled
it down onto her knees.
“Little burgs,” rumbled Bill, after a
time.” can be the devil.”
Silence. The night was an immense
i purple bowl turned upside down over
{us, and under it our little activities
dwindled. Was Bill, too, soaking in
ithe peace—feeling the futility of
| miles ?
i I faded out. For a long time the
Jessamy-kid’s thistledown voice lifted
i to me, through an open window, where
iI lay abed. I heard her final entreaty
| —“Don’t go!”
i “Your bedtime, sister.”
| “Please don’t—"
| But Bill’s “good night” was sud-
i denly flint, like a period to the wiles
{of a Blandie Dillon.
i Bill himself, by the light of the
i candle he carried, was too big for the
little bower where he joined me—the
kid’s room, which she’d given us be-
| cause it was ready, murmuring scme-
thing about the down-stairs bedroom
for herself. Bill moved about, tak-
ing it all in: the white wall-paper
with its silver poppy pattern; the
white furniture with hand-painted
sprays of pink roses; the framed mot-
ito of a ship on a wavy sea beneath
That
room held the whole history of a little
girl, from her first small rocking-
chair tc her first bottle of perfume.
it held, too, all the evidences of lov-
ing puttering for her comfort and di-
version, from the carved wood tas-
sels for handles on the drawers of the
dresser to the home-made bookracks
and window-pegs.
“She’s an old child, isn’t she?” I
| grunts to Bill. “How do you dope her
out?”
“Not odd,” snaps Bill; “and she’s
not a child—she’s eighteen her next
birthday.”
“Huh? You do say!”
him, then I cackled.
Bll whipped about on me: “If you
mean to insinuate by that open ex-
haust that she’s up to any wise-dame
tricks, you’re wrong!”
“No,” I subsided, “I didn’t mean
that; she’s an innocent baby if there
ever was one. But that’s just it Bill
—when you look at a willowy, high-
headed young girl and think what life
can do to her!”
“Umph! Guess her father does a
pretty thorough job of looking after
her.
“Did you meet the old gentleman?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t strike you as kind of queer?
I mean—My God, Bill! Don’t you
notice how still it is—how even those
frogs gurgling away out there don’t
make any dent on the silence?”
“It strikes me,” Bill yawned, “that
for nerves you’ve got a lady in del-
icate health tied. If you can spare
me one of those pillows, Rudy——"
But in spite of the fact that he was
two nights shy of sleep, Bill had the
same struggle dropping off that I
had; his sleep, when it did come, was
as troubled as mine. I awoke once
to discover that Bill was doing sixty
I stared at
porch, and reflected that the reed chair
for a steering-wheel. I awoke again
‘and lay listening to the ticking of a
| few drops of rain on the tin roof and
' the singing of a cricket in the room;
{and when a dog below—probably the
spaniel—suddenly let out an awful
wail, Bill registered it, too, in shiv-
ering cuss words.
“Sleep?” I asked him when, at
the first cockcrow, he jabbed me and
set his feet on the floor.
“Get up—and throttle ker down, or
you'll wake the house.”
“You're not going to
again?”
“We are not. I settled our bill with
her last night.”
But, as it turned out, Jessamy
couldn’t very well be avoided. When
Bill opened our bedrcom door, there
she sat, in the same pink dress she’d
. worn last night, crumpled up against
the wall, with tear-stains on her
cheeks and fast asleep. Disturbed,
‘she blinked up at Bill through the
i moist tangle of dark hair, and vague-
‘ly smiled. Abruptly a ripple went
over her face, and she began to be-
seech Bill not to go.
Bill laid a paternal hand on her
head, and explained to her how it was
he had to be moving on. He swung
her up, and she trailed him down the
stairs, meeting his questions with
fresh entreaties that he stay just for
breakfast.
I lingered in the room, considering.
see her
Something had gone wrong with the |
girl’s father—but what? The answer
was in the back of my own mind, but
1 hedged from it.
the stairs, tripped up short on what
my own eyes were witness to.
car was drawn up at the roadside,
. ready for the forward leap to Augus-
‘ta. But Jessamy, with a sharp case-
. knife in her hands and desperation in
her face, was operating upon its tires!
Even as 1 gasped, she stabbed fierce-
ly and the hiss of a punctured fourth
‘tire was added to the expiring breath
of the other three.
Bill appeared from the kitchen, a
teakettle pouring water meant for the |
| radiator upon his shoe as he grasped
the calamity. They contemplated
each other, and which of their two
i faces was the sicker-locking would be
hard to say.
“Sister,” I fumbles, “isn’t there
some relative handy we could—?”
But Bill rips into her, his all-Amer-
ican range of epithets and his disil-
lusioned experience of women both
concentrated into one stream of
gungent bitterness against this
youngster.
The kid, like the tires, collapsed.
She whirled past us, her eyes wild.
“You damned idiot, can’t you see—?”
1 moaned back at him, as I flung after
her.
But the door of the down-stairs
bedroom cut her off from my sym-
pathy. My hand on the knob, I blink-
ed my own cowardice with the argu-
ment that I never had been a guy to
intrude upon people; the absolute lack
of any sound in that shut room fas-
cinated me.
Time passed. Wavering between
doors, I was conscious that Bill hailed
a passing flivver and departed; that
he returned in a second flivver, with
a garage hand and three spares. Now
he was making the tools fly and the
mechanic step
Still procrastinating I saw that
an upright buggy drawn by an up-
right horse and containing two ex-
| tremely upright elderly ladies, had
‘pulled up at the side of the road,
| while the occupants,
spelling each
i other, asked, in vcices rising crisp-
| er and clearer for Mr. Jonathan Rusk.
Bill gave them a scant shrug of the
shoulder. Such lack eof gentlemanly
attention obviously roused the indig-
nation of the two ladies.
They dismounted, tied their horse,
came stepping in a high-handed,
spinsterly way up the walk, and in-
quired of me. I murmured politely that
1 believed he was out. They explain-
ed to me growing more and more per-
emptory. how Jonathan Rusk had
promised to send them a fresh supuly
of baskets for their gift shop the day
before yesterday and had not kept his
word; how they had yesterday missed
two sales of picnic-hampers, owing to
Mr. Rusk’s delinquency; how the tour-
ist season was short and they could
not afford to miss sales: how they had
themselves driven out for the baskets
this morning before time to open shop
—in short, how they would be pleased
to have me remove myself from the
doorway and summon Mr. Rusk at
once.
I owned that Mr. Rusk had been
away for the night.
Their eyes fairly lanced me with
questions; from all the prying queries
they would have put at once, they
chose the most pertinent: Who was 1?
Just an overnight guest, I assured
them.
Jessamy Rusk—was Jessamy at
home?
Yes.
I was the overnight guest of Jess-
amy?
Not alone, I. flushed; oh, no, not
alone. My running mate, too——
But at this moment Bill strode up,
wiping his hands on his trouser legs,
and in the same instant Jessamy tip-
toed from the room, closed the door
behind her, and stood there looking
like a white cosmos that’s been step-
ped on. The two ladies went from
Jessamy to Bill, and back to me. The
inspection was so definitely unpleas-
ant that even Bill, screwed up as he
was to the miles again, gave the spin-
sters his specific scowling attention.
They shifted the attack to Jessamy:
“Where is your father?”
“He—he’s not at home.”
“When will he be home ?”
“Perhaps,” 1 suggested smoothly,
“Miss Jessamy can fix you up with
the baskets, in place of her father.”
But Jessamy, her face strange, only
asked of Bill: “You're not leaving
me ?”
“Sorry.”
“But you can’t leave with them!
They are the ones who invented the
stories about my mother—the ones
father blamed the most for »
“When,” persisted the arid, clear
voice, “do you expect your father to
re— 17”
“Not ever! He’s not coming back
ever! Now will you go, and leave me
alone?” Jessamy wheeled, and fled;
1 dawdled down |
The {
{1 knew, before we stepped into the
room, what it was we would find.
, What I didn’t understand was the re-
actions of Jessamy herself: whether
she was just terrified and trying to
‘make believe it wasn’t so, or whether
, the concealment was a part of her at-
tempt to hold onto us, or whether she’
was merely dazed, instinctively cling-
ing to her own and postponing the
moment when he must be taken away
from her. What mixture of terror,
courage, reticence, numbness and eva-
sion prompted her to act as she did, I
don’t know—but then, I’ve never had
much experience in unraveling the
kinks of a young girl’s mind.
The bed, with Jessamy tumbled
down beside it, held the reason for the
room’s peculiar hush. The man’s pro-
file was toward us, so white that the
nose was momentarily erased against
the pale wall. But as we stood over
him, the face was complete again in
all its features, complete in its un-
earthly tranquility, beautifully com-
plete in the memory of its last earthly
smile. I'd seen death before, but nev-
er anything to compare with this mir-
acle of gentle peace. The peace en-
gulfed Jessamy’s sobs; the only sound
now was a whimpering and patter of
the toe-nails on the wood floor as the
spaniel discovered his mistress.
Bill, his goggles pushed up on his
forehead, muttered: “He must have
been a wonderful old man.
“Heart?” cried cne of of the spin-
sters.
i Jessamy sobbed.
“Was it his heart?” persisted the
other.
“Yes”
“Hm—TI thought so—that bluish...
Did he die in his bed ?” (They were like
(kind who used stock phrases like’
| that.)
“Y-yes.”
“When 22
| “Yesterday afternoon, before you
| c-came,” she said, ignoring them and
| speaking to Bill, who stood over her.
“But why,” the cross-examination
continued, “didn’t you notify: ) id
“Oh, please,” entreated Jessamy
“couldn’t you make them go ’way?”
Bill was considering the closed
eyes, the arms folded so naturally
lac ‘oss the still breast—was thinking,
| with me, that Jessamy must have done
this. “You poor— baby,” he groan-
ed; “why didn’t you tell me?” He
went down on his knees, shifted her
complete onto his left shoulder, and
held her cradled there in his arms.
“I tried to tell yeu, but I c-couldn’t.
I was a-afraid Y
Bill was muttering words against
her hair, her cheek, her throat—words
that sounded like “honey-bunny, bun-
ny-honey.”
The spinsters were gaping. “You
came after his death? You stay-
ed—?”
i Bill shot them a straight look, and
{ said with a quiet violence: “You two
git! Now!”
The ladies departed.
I murmurs to Bill: “I'm staying.
I'll wire Molly, and we'll take care of
her. You can hop to Augusta and
pick up your bonuses.”
. “Bonuses?” says Bill vaguely, tak-
ing up the kid, and folding himself
down on a chair, with all of Jessamy’s
shivering fright tucked ¢loser to his
heart. “I’m staying, Rudy. You get
on to Augusta yourself. I lose out,
i but the car doesn’t lose out. see?”
| That’s how it happened Bill stopped
| rermanently at Candlelight Inn. He
I lost $3,500 in bonuses, and he for-
| feited his victory in the last profes-
; sional run he ever made, but he didn’t
seem to mind that.
Molly and I dropped in on them one
day this spring. The place was as
usual, sign and all, but a new devil’s
red tractor was tearing across the
nearest field. “You oid son-of-a-gun!”
Bill hails me.
“Meet the missus,
with a certain pride.
Bill went through the proper mo-
tions of welcoming admiration and
respect. “Meet”—he turns, raises his
voice, “Heigh, Jess!”—“meet the mis-
sus yourself, Rudy!”
Jessamy came around the house, in
a bright pink dress, and pursued by
a sheep. She skipped, and the sheep
skipped after her, and it gave you a
sensation of pure tickled joy in your
diaphragm just to see therr. She ran
laughing up to Bill, and tucked a hand
in his overall pocket, and met Molly,
and recollected me; there wasn’t much
doubt about her happiness—it was as
sparkling as the spring sunshine that
blessed them both.
I says: “I've got a stunt for you,
Bill.”
He says: “I've got a reputation in
this county for covering ground with
a tractor that I’ve got to maintain; no,
Rudy. I'm out of the racing game for
good.”—By Valma Clark.
“Bill,” 1 says
Six Illegal Fishermen Pay Heavy
Fines and Costs.
Six illegal fishermen, two of them
ministers, paid fines and costs
amounting to $812 to a justice of the
peace, at Jersey Shore, last Friday,
for illegal fishing in Lycoming county
streams. The men were Rev. M. J.
Rehean, Samuel J. Byrne, Clair J.
Maims and Milton Elder, all of
Oscecla Mills, and Rev. E. M. Driscoll
and A. J. Anderson, of Qil City.
The party spent four days last
week at English Centre, Lycoming
county, on a fishing expedition. When
they had packed up ready to leave
for home, on Friday, State game
protector W. B. MecClarin appeared
upon the scene and made a search of
their effects. In a two gallon thermos
bottle he found seventy-three trout
under six inches in length and four
undersized bass. Forty-five other
trout had their heads cut off so that
it was impossible to tell how long
they were.
The fishermen were taken before
justice of the peace E. T. Crane, at
Jersey Shore, who imposed a fine of
$128.89 on each man and seven dol-
lars costs, a total of $812, which they
paid.
——The “Watchman” is the most
the storm of her sobs was flung out | readable paper published. Try it.