— “Bellefonte, Pa., April 11, 1930. ITS EASY TO LAUGH. i | ! suddenly and quite dred. He saw that he was obeyed, too! Once, when Mildred was trying to slip quietly over to see Rodney, Tom met the car and turned it back. And, when I was invited down rather unexpectedly, I was hardly surprised, knowing Tom, when he explained that he wanted me to keep an eye on Mildred, He It’s easy to laugh when skies are blue had been called away, he said, and, And the sun is shining bright; Yes, easy to laugh when your friends are true And there's happiness in sight; But when hope has fled and the are gray, And the friends of the past have turned away ah, then, indeed, it's a hero's feat slides | unless he could leave some respons- ible person in charge, he must take her with him to make sure that she didn’t race to the Hall the moment his back was turned.” If I had not realized already that Master Tom was an ass, this would have convinced me. «A most improper request,” I said. To conjure a smile in the face of | “I hope you had nothing to do with defeat. it's easy to laugh when the storm is o'er And your ship is safe in port; Yes, easy to laugh when you're on the shore Seéure from the tempest’'s sport; Fut when wild waves wash o'er the stormswept deck And your gallant ship is a gallant wreck Ah, * that is the time when it is worth - while To look in the face of defeat with a smile. It's easy to fought And you know that the won easy to you sought Is yours when the race is run; But here’s to the man who can when the blast laugh when the Dbattle's victory's Yes, laugh when the prize laugh Of adversity blows; he will conquer | y : Mildred went her way, and I went at last. For the hardest beat Is the man who can laugh face of defeat. man in the world to in the r—— le ——— THE SEVENTH YEAR “Gratitude ?” murmured my cousin Theresa, dreamily interrogative. “I know the word, of course, but the thing it stands for——” As any one who knows Cannes is able to testify, the little shops be- tween the Majestic and the Carlton are as seductive as any in the Rue de la Paix and not much more than twice as expensive. My cousin Theresa and I had watched American and South American women, French, English, Russian and Spanish, each attended by a man to pay the bills and carry the parcels, and we had ex- pressed an ungrudging satisfaction that so many rich men could still be found to support so many expensive women. An unmistakably English couple who had just dived—after long inspection of the windows—into Lacloche’s prompted me to add that, as England was the most heavily taxed country in the world, I was grateful that the inland revenue au- thorities had left enough money in circulation for a fortunate few to participate in this international riv- alry of ostentation. It was at this point that Theresa .exploded in the manner which Ihave described. Gratitude? “We'll hope they're as grateful as I am,” I said. ‘I love to see women beautifully dressed and I love beau- tiful jewelry—" “H’ll be buying her emeralds,” said | my cousin between her teeth. ‘“Mil- dred has the loveliest emeralds I've ever seen. Tom gave her a great collar of them when they married—" | “Were those friends of yours?” I asked rather superfiuously. “Tom and Mildred? They were. Mildred and I were at school togeth- | it.” Theresa nodded, sawing the air with an emphatic forefinger. ‘I made it clear to Tom,” she an- swered, “that if I was to stay an- other hour in his house it must be neither as a spy nor as a keeper. He announced to the heavens at large that, if Mildred got up to any of her | tricks, he’d divorce her as quick as winking. I said that was entirely his affair. He appealed to me as his oldest friend, the friend of both par- ties, the woman who'd brought them together. ; “I said I'd do everything in m power to keep the rift from widen- ing, but that, if he continued to sus- pect Mildred without cause, she would very soon give him cause to suspect her in grim earnest. Some- thing to cry for, as our nurses used to threaten. If I remained at all, I said, I should remain asa friend and 1a guest. “And I was as good as my word, mine. When she told me she had 5 was just saying to myself. Thus far and no farther, when my maid brought a message that Sir Thomas would like to see me if I was dis- engaged. “Oh, is he back?” I asked. «Jt was utterly unnecessary for me to pretend anything to any-- body, but I wanted to keep cléar of the conspiracy. I wanted my maid to realize that I could meet Tom without any kind of embar- rassment, It was no good! My maid was in as deeply as the rest. I shall believe to my dying day that it was the boot and knife boy who telephoned to the Hall and told Mildred she must come back at once. * “You may be sure I was not let off! While I kept Tom out of mis- j chief, my maid was going to patrol | the Hall road in the hope of inter- cepting Mildred and putting heron her guard. And, before I'd been ‘talking to Tom for three seconds, !Ihad not only joined the consipracy ‘put taken charge of it! “] said it was a pleasant surprise to see him before we'd expected ‘him. He . interrupted by asking when Mildred had left the house. i I said, some time after breakfast. | He informed me that he had the | best reasons for believeing that she had gone to the Hall on Friday night and had not returned since. I answered that this was not only ' fantastic but impossible; Mildred land I had dined together »n Friday, { lunched and dined together on Sat-! urday.” As my cousin paused, I took oc- ,casion to say that she had not spared her corroborative detail. { “What else could I do?” she ask- ed helplessly. “The story about the : masseuse might be true, but I some buisness with her women's .o;ldn’t use it after what the ser- institute, I pretended to believe her yants had said. We were all going implicitly.” to be hanged, so far as I could So much irony was lavished onigee and it didn’t matter much the “implicitly” and the “pretended” | whether we were hanged for shee that T felt obliged to ask ee Ts. ne > the women's institute was a blind brief for perjury, it may be justifi- And, though I hold no | story! for the Hall. “I don’t know,” answered Theresa primly. “I shall never know, I considered it my business not to know. All I can tell you is that the institute was one direction, the Hall in another and that Mildred went and returned for all the world as though she'd walked round five sides of a hexagon. It wasn't my business! Hadn't I told them both, till I was sick and tired, that I should observe strict neutrality? And it wasn't even my business when she had to visit her masseuse in Bath. A sudden twinge of rheu- matism. Two or three rubbings. Could I ever forgive her if she stayed away for the night? “I did suggest that she might have the masseuse out to the house. Ordinary prudence. And Tom ready ; to put the worst construction on everything. Mildred said it was out of the question; the woman had an invalid mother who couldn’t be left.” Theresa paused to make a calcu- lation on her fingers. “That must have been a Friday,” she resumed. “Tom had gone away on the Wednesday, for a week. Yes, that's right. And he came back, without a word of warning, | on the Sunday.” “To find that she wasn’t there?” I hazarded. My cousin nodded grimly. “And that I didn’t know where she was! And I had no idea whether we had a spy among the servants! And there was no time to make up a And, if there had been, I couldn’t imagine what kind of story Mildred would like me to make up!” Theresa’s voice, which had been er, and Tom was my oldest friend. | rising in a crescendo of excitement, It was through me that they first suddenly dropped. “Quite met seven years ago.” As Theresa has herself been married candidly, | I lost my nerve,” she sighed, “When I saw Tom’s car coming up the fully ten years, I realized that Ma- | grive, I fled to my room. After all dame Mildred’s offense could not be | § was that of stealing the heart of her old- | could see no possible way of keep- est friend's oldest friend. Where did the ingratitude come in?” I ventured. My cousin stared resentfully at the many colored windows behind which Madame Mildred was adding to her collection of emeralds, “The trouble began last year,” my cousin explained, “at Tom’s place in Somerset. His marches with Fat Rodney’s, and they were all good friends until Tom, who's as jealous as a cat, took it into his head that Rodney and Mildred were becoming too fond of each other. I don’t know that there was anything more in it than in Mildred's last half-dozen af- fairs, but Tom decided that he must put his foot down. “He pretended, I believe, that he | couldn't allow any gossip about his : own wife in his own county, but the | truth is that the time had come for them to readjust themselves. They'd been married six years, and the sev- enth year is always supposed to be the most critical. Tom was desper- ately in love and desperately out of | i ! : not Mildred’s keeper. I ing out of it. “Well, the car pulled up at the door. The chauffeur rang the bell. I heard Tom say: “Is Her Lady- ! ship anywhere about? And I wait- ed for the butler to tell him that Her Ladyship had gone away two days before, without her maid, and that nobody knew where she was or when she would be back. I had a dreadful feeling that Tom would order the car off to the Hall, that he’d catch them red-handed, that there would be shooting all round, “To my amazement, I heard the butler saying quite calmly: I will see, Sir Thomas. “Before I'd had time to collect myself, I heard the butler coming back to say that Her Ladyship had gone out in walking things soon after breakfast, but expected to be |W back in time to change before luncheon. No mention of the mas- seuse, by the way! And no hint of any direction! “The next to come into the con- love by turns. Very much on edge. | spiracy was the gatekeeper at the Very unreasonable. And Mildred was | south lodge, who blithely swore the same, except that she’s never that Her Ladyship had taken her been in love with anybody; she just | dog through that way between 10 condescends to people so long as she and 11. thinks they can be useful to her. After this, you won't bein the least surprised to hear that I “Well, the marriage was hanging fell without a moment's hesitation!” by a thread. Mildred was wonder- My cousin looked up at me de- ing whether it wouldn't be better to | fiantly as though challenging me to go back to her old poverty than to 'say that I should have acted differ- put up with Tom any longer, wheth- ' ently in her place. er he hadn’t exhausted his usefulness. Tom was stamping about, saying, |in any “It would have been bad enough event, for Mildred to be “This isn’t good enough—' and hop- ; hanged on my evidence, even if the ing for an out-and-out quarrel if he ' evidence had been corkscrewed out zouldn’t bring her to heel. travagance was appalling! “She neglected her local And then people began to talk about Her ex- ; of me, | ! duties! {| forward and volunteered but it would have been a million times worse if I'd rushed to Tom that his servants were lying to him the way she was seen everywhere : and that Mildred had disappeared with Rodney. What could ‘poor’ Tom | on the flimsiest of excuses for one be thinking about to allow it?” Though I am personally unac- two -uainted with “Fat” Rodney, | night and had then stayed away t At the outset T had insisted I have | that I was there as a friend, tak-