Bewoaiatdnn.
Bellefonte, Pa., August 8, 1930.
A HR EE EBSA,
JUST FOLKS.
It does not matter much that I
This day have failed to gain renown,
This, to my credit, I reply:
“I have not crushed another down.
I have not prospered by a lie
Nor over trifles worn a frown.
“It does not matter much tonight
_ That I have little gold to spend
‘What is lost by doing right?
Poor gains are_those regrets attend.
Against this boast the loss is slight:
I played the man and played the
friend.”
So homeward bound I whistle now
Gay snatches of a merry song
I have not broken trust or vow,
I have not stooped to shame or wrong.
No weaker man with battered brow
Is cursing me for being strong.
—By Edgar A. Guest.
“SUSAN AND THE DOCTOR.”
Susan started going with the
boys early. Too early. Her mother
had died, and there was no one to
look after her. Her father had af-
fairs of his own on his hands.
Susan's escapades, from the time
she was 13, had been a source of
talk in the town where she lived.
But they seemed all to have hap-
pened in a past that was not in-
credible. People had -almost forgot-
ten that she had once gone with
Buddie Merton and Carl Flannigan
and Chuck Myers and Pat Dougherty
—her affair had been going on for
so many years with the doctor,
And it had obscured not only her
relations to other men, but almost
everything else about Susan. Peo-
ple did not think about the long
and steady efficiency of her posi-
tion in the Farmers Bank, where
she had risen from clerk to assist-
ant cashier, and where she was ac-
tually a standy-by. When they
went into the bank, and up to
Susan’s little barred window, they
did not see her—slim, shining-hair-
ed, immaculate—as the cashier who
dealt out nickels and dimes and bills
with swift, experienced, white fin-
gers. They did not recall how her
present security was due to her-
self alone. She had never depended
upon her father for a living. She
had never depended upon any one.
She had borrowed money and taken
a business course and then asked
old Henry Houghton for a place in the
bank; and it was upon that first
meager and grudging admission that
she had lived and put money aside
and paid for the always fashionable
perfection of her tailored clothes
and the smartness of her hats.
They looked through the little win-
dow at her white hands and smooth
hair, and thought:
“I wonder how her affair is com-
ing on with the doctor!
Oh, yes! Susan was handy and she
was bright. She made some of
those pretty clothes herself—knitted
Scarves when scarves were in fash-
ion, and embroidered collar and cuff
sets when they were the thing. She
kept her two rooms and kitchenette
at Mrs. Calverton’s in exquisite
order. Women did admit that. And
there were men in town who said
that no one in that bank knew as
much about its business as Susan.
But all that seemed irrelevant to the
consistent interest of her love affair.
It obscured the rest of her life to
Susan herself. There was never a
moment when she was not aware
of it. At the bank, when she was
making accounts with swift and
practiced accuracy, it was there in
her breast, something unsatisfied, an
ache and a craving; it was there
behind the businesslike rhythm of
the adding machine; and when she
sat at the big table in the back
room where the sunshine lay slant-
wise in the morning its sweetness
enveloped her in dreamy pain. She
could never give herself up to the
warmth of the sunshine. Her white
fingers had to keep at work to ease
the craving and subdue the thoughts
that drew to their tight, inevitable
center in her mind.
It was with her when she went
out on the street at noon. She
frowned at the outdoor brightness.
Suppose the doctor should come
past! The possibility of it blinded
her for a moment, with tense per-
sistence of desire; and she would
have liked—if she could have liked!
—to stay in the shelter of the bank,
where it was shaded and apart.
She might be with Nita Allen, the
stenographer; but her eyes could
not be restrained from their rest-
less, watching alertness. She must
notice every car on the street. She
must look down the narrowing vista
to the building where the doctor
had his office on the fifth floor, and
must strain for a brief and unsat-
isfying glimpse of the figure of a
man who might be the doctor him-
self coming out of the building. In
Wessel's drug store, where she had
her tuna-fish sandwich and glass of
malted milk at the shining new
counter, she had to talk gayly and
brightly, in the usual ironic rep-
artee, with the crowded line of sten-
ographers and young business men,
above her restless preoccupation and
the constant small wear of pain.
“Hello, Susan! How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Where do you keep yourself
these days?”
In the busy street of the growing
town she felt almost a stranger—
she, Susan, who had lived here all
her life and knew every window dis-
play in every store! But her affair
with the doctor had set her apart
from the rest of the town—from
the old crowd, her own crowd:
Elsie Adams, was married and had
two babies; Letha Grove, who lived
with her parentsand hadn't changed
since high school days; Mary Wil.
son; who came back now and then
from her work in Chicago. Susan
seemed never to have known
another man than the doctor; and
at times, when she heard in the
{ —with her
drug store the animated chatter
about dances, she wondered if she
could actually
whom the boys used to fall over
one another to ask to dances, who
chose this one or that with imperi-
ous freedom, who was the most
popular girl of her day.
But when she went home after
work—home? well, back to Mrs.
Calverton’s —at half past five
through smoky twilights of fall or the
veiled tenderness of spring, resent-
ful wonder would come over her.
again,
She went up the same gray—
painted steps of the large, neat porch.
She put her hand on the same
bronze knob of the door. Inside,
the house odor, orderly and slightly
aging and remote, never quite that
of home, enveloped her in dreari-
ness. She could not stand the board
that creaked on the stairs and the
hot-water faucet that ran a mea-
ger and maddening trickle.
How could she endure this place
a day longer? She had certainly
never meant to spend all her life
in a rooming house. Independence
was all right. She wasn't going to
have to ask anybody for things.
But Susan had always planned,” be-
ing methodical and worldly shrewd,
that when the time came, when she
was ready, she would marry and
have a home of her own, the kind
she wanted. And here she was,
well along in the twenties, with
nearly all the other girls in the
crowd settled, and she still living
in two rented rooms at Mrs. Cal-
verton’s! Sometimes it seemed as if
her whole scheme of life were go-
ing astray .
But when she entered her room,
with its waiting orderliness of
cushions and reading lamp and
cigaret trays placed here and there,
the dreariness vanished. Her im-
patience sternly curbed itself. Mrs.
Calverton was used to the whole
thing.
Besides, the doctor would be here
in a little while.
Susan went into the kitchenette.
The shelves were filled with things
of his own special choice—Mocha '
coffee, fig preserves, salted almonds.
Susan saw these things,
brought back the beloved and secret
intimacy of a hundred little dinners.
She used to love toput on her best
clothes and go out to dinner with |
men, tothe dining room of the Mel-
rose, the most expensive place
and be seen by them. But there
was a painful kind of delight in
giving up these old pleasures of
hers—her own special pleasures.
She wanted them again at times; |
but there was the same delight in
sacrificing them to his demand for
secrecy and seclusion.
Anyway, he would be here in a
little while. She would be with him.
He came up the stairs, into the
living room, into the doorway of
the kitchenette. Susan felt the vital
largeness of his presence, war
the whole place into life; although
old manner of cool
concentration she did not turn from
lher work at the small gas stove.
His arms were around her, and she
was drawn backward.
“Susan! Aren't you going to tell
me you're glad to see me?”
Through his arms she felt the
straining domination of his need.
The dinner was exciting and
happy and cozy—one of their own
little dinners, at the card table with
the linen cloth that Susan had em-
briodered in her leisure time, with
the favorite dishes she had kept
from her own home, and with the
orange candles and the green-glass
candlesticks that he had bought her.
The shades were down. Their voices .
were so low, sothat even Mrs. Cal.
verton could not hear.
But after he had left, Susan lay
in her narrow bed aching and alone.
Her tingling body wg# tense with
resentment. No matter how they
parted, her body was left tense and
aching—for he went away, he left
her alone, she could not stay warm
and at ease in his arms and wake
up beside him in the morning. She
hated him.
Then she turned and tossed. Her
sleep seemed always to be shallow
and tense. She craved wildly to
break away from him. Why must
her own need be sacrificed to his?
Her life was passing—But it was as
if he had sown within her the seed
of his trouble.
The affair had begun in quite a
different way.
Susan, for the time being,
free of all her men.
had broken the last frayed end of
her brief but hotly melodramatic
“case” with Pat Dougherty. And
she didn’t want to go with any one
for a while. It seemed to her that
she had tried nearly all the eligible
was
men in this town, and that there |
in any of them.’
was no interest
There wasn't a one whose silly de-
votion could make up for the loss
of her position in the bank or who
could give her anything that could |
surpass it.
In idleness and in revulsion from
the extremely hot persistence of
Pat Dougherty, Susan had looked
up some of the old high school
crowd again. She took pleasure -in
going with Letha Grove and “the
girls” to concerts and basketball
games. There was in it the de-
fiance of the men who admired her,
and challenge to them, Never had
she enjoyed her work in the bank
so much. She exulted in the rapid,
ceaseless click of her adding ma.
chine. When ever she thought of
Pat Dougherty it was with a wild,
glad sense of escape. At this time
Susan used to wake up and look
out at the dew wet grass of Mrs.
Calverton’s lawn, with a feeling as
cool and fresh as the morning.
However, such a state of affairs
could not last for any one used to
as much excitement as Susan. She
began to get restless and’ to make
excuses when ‘the girls wanted her
to go somewhere with them. She
wanted—what did she want?—she
didn’t know. But something.
“I'l tell you what's the matter
with you.” Mrs. Calverton said.
Stisan used to go downstairs some-
times and talk to Mrs. Calverton in
"the evening.
be Susan—the one
and they
in |
town, where she would see people !
In disgust she
love, That's what's the trouble.”
“I!” Susan exclaimed. “This is
about the first time I've been out
of it.”
! “You think so,” Mrs. Calverton
said.
{ Susan laughed gleefully again.
But when she went back upstairs
to her room, that she had taken
such delight in arranging and keep-
ing just as she wanted it, she felt
restless and lonely.
She began to look at men with a
different eye, although she was
scarcely aware of it.
really thought, before, of how hand-
some he was—and interesting, too,
and mysterious! Living in that big
old brick house on the great lawn
the dimly romantic legend of the “not
quite right” aunt and invalid moth-
good looks or noticed them because
she hadn't considered the doctor
within the realms of possibility. He
had never gone with a woman in
this town. He never appeared at
dances. Susan began to amuse her-
self by wondering about him and
speculating ‘half idly about him,
When she hurt her arm, ina fall
from the rocks at a picnic she
wouldn't let Ross Crabtree take her
to Dr. Bradley's office when they
got to town; but the next day, in
a spirit of mischief and daring, and
she didn’t know what else, Susan
went to the doctor’s office.
She hadn’t exactly meant any-
thing at first—or nothing that could
be put into words. She hadn't
thought when she began it that it
controlled affairs that never went
too far—Or had she meant some-
thing more? Had she been restless,
wearied, impatient, tired of her cold
and narrow hardness, wishing to be
forced somehow into change?—At
any rate, she hadn't meant nothing
like this. She hadn’t dreamed, see-
ing that handsome face upon the
street one day and wondering what
i the doctor would be like if she knew
him, how the sullen humors, the
{ regal gloom, and lordly gayety, the
insistent warmth of his intimate
presence could break into her shin-
ing hardness; and how at last her
I cool strength, at the appeal of his
sudden childishness, could diffuse
into a passion of tenderness. She
had noidea when she started deftly,
and with a subtly cool speculation,
ito draw him to her, that the thing
i could ever be real—that he would
want more of her, and that she
would give it, with the future—al-
ways so clear to Susan—lost in
haze—
i
| Other girls in town, girls living
at home and managing only a “date”
now and then with an unattached
man, envied Susan the Doctor. They
saw the two driving off in the Doc-
tor’s car, not to a dance—they nev-
er went to dances—but all by them-
Selves for a long and mysterious
rive. : “
| realize how the situation and the
‘relationship between them had slow-
ily changed through the years.
| ~ She remembered, with brooding
nostalgia now—a wonder if she
| could have made things end differ-
' ently—what he used to tell her at
first. i
“You're the only thing I've got
in this town. The only thing I've
got in this damned, futile existence.”
And ‘then his voice broke, and his
big, handsome body was twisted and
crumpled in pain before her awed,
incredulous eyes, “Oh, God, Susan
—give me some happiness! You're
free. You can do as you -please
‘with yourself. And I'm held in this
damned—or, no, God, I can’t call it
that!'—but I can’t live in it any
longer, they never let me out of it.”
Yes, that was true. It was she
who had been the free one, the in.
calculable one, at first. He used to
tell her that she lived in the open
daylight and he always in shadow.
She was the only ray of daylight
that he had. Was it through a long
underground persistance of craving,
then, to right the balance and as-
sert his final necessity of domina-
tion, that he had slowly bound her
to him and taken her freedom with
her love? By the giving of a free
gift she had bound herself. But
‘that she, Susan, should be conquer-
ed and held at last by tenderness!
{—what an amazing overturning of
nature and fate.
Gradually, what he said to her
came to be:
“But how can I? You knew how
things were in the beginning. Well,
it’s just the same. They're still
alive. And you wouldn't live with
them.”
Even that was true. The old im-
perious Susan could not even have
contemplated being shut up for a
night with those terrible women in
; that gloomy house.
She was not too loyal to wonder
| sometimes, now, if the hold of the
two old women was still so inevit-
able, She had made him a differ-
ent person from the solitary man
she had passed upon the street.
The compensation and sustainment
had done their work. That terrible
hold did not sap all his strength
jor turn his energy into hopeless
i brooding. He had a secret pride.
And although he still shunned dan-
ces and social meetings—and made
Susan shun them—in his old mis-
anthropic way, he was no longer
afraid to meet other men. His train-
ing and study, after all these years,
was at last beginning to show; and
people in physical extremity did not
care about the equivocal reputation
of their surgeon. = He was making
money now. Susan knew how much
that meant, and fear had glowly
grown into her that he could make
place for her if he would. But she
dared not quiet the fear by an as-
surance that would force the last
of her pride to break away from
him.
His mother died. Susan heard it
at noon - in the: drug store. Fred
Jefferson told her.
“I hear the doctor’s. mother died
last night.”
“You've never been in '
One day she happened to pass the
. doctor on the street. She had never
that was dark with trees, and with '
er. She hadn't really thought of his’
would be essentially different from :
her other wild and yet carefully
! But Susan herself could scarcely
' verton’s.
aa
Things irrelevant to that state-
‘ment were the first that came into
Susan’s mind: Fred Jefferson's: eyes,
curious and cold, betraying the tone
he had taken, and the calculated
shock of his statement (Fred was
an old beau of hers, he had always
taken a sneering tone about her af-
fair with the doctor;) and then a
painful thrust of anger because she
must hear from other people this
news affecting the man who was
hers. The news seemed to have no
other significance, although a, kind
of sickness made her food taste-
less to her.
It was not until she went out of
the drugstore, into the open light
of the street, that she stopped still
-—for the barest second-—while the
meaning of the event opened up
dizziness before her,
“The doctcr’s mother died
' night.”
A wildness of impatience thrilled
through her. It was agony to go
on with her work at the bank. She
walked home through a changed, in-
credible world—it was June, lawns
were fresh, roses were out. Susan
hadn't noticed that until now. The
low sunlight of half-past-five lay
across Mrs. Calverton’s lawn. The
green ‘thick stalks of the peony
bush bent over and laid flushed
thick blossoms against the cool
earth. For the first time in years
Susan thought of the woods—in the
deep green filter of sunlight, the
flush of wild geraniums—Cars sped
down the wide bright street. She
"heard voices of children playing. All
the town. all the world, was com-
ing out of the tightness and un-
| certainty of spring into the open
and sunlit freedom of summer.
He telephoned the bare news to
her—a guarded voice, withdrawn
and strange. He could not seeher
just now. He would manage it to-
“morrow. But after all these years,
on this perfect night, it was ter-
.rible to be thrown back again into
the old tense suspension of living.
She ate a solitary dinner, stood at
the window a while, and went to
bed,
The news made its small
in the town.
last
uproar
Not because of the
doctor’s mother herself—she had
been, in her own person, almost
forgotten—but because of the way
her death would affect the doctor
and Susan.
“What's
her?”
There were very few who could
actually say. “She used to be quite
a beautiful woman. The old doctor
did everything for her.” It was
rumored, but never quite substan-
tiated, that the old doctor had
taken his own life. But they only
knew ~ that for years she had ab-
sorbed the care and money of her
son; and all reminiscence of her
ended: .
“I suppose now the doctor will
marry Susan.”
And Susan, accepted for some
time in a role seemingly static, be-
came a heroine of a sort in the
eyes of the town again.
been the matter with
“But the summer went on and the
thing still hung fire. The doctor
stayed on in the brick house, Susan
went daily to her work at the bank
and back to her rooms at Mrs. Cal-
The roses were gone, the
peonies shed their petals on the
grass; there Were only bitter-smell-
ing yarrow and boneset in the woods.
People wondered, laughed cynically,
or were indifferent; women who had
loved Susan’s mother talked angrily
about the selfishness of men: and
the rest of the force in the bank,
getting their heads together, de.
clared:
“Susan ought to give him a jack-
ing up!”
There were so many things to
to think of, the doctor said. There
was the old home. There was
Aunt Agnes, She trusted him. Af-
ter all these years, he could not
put her in an institution. And when
Susan hard and resentful in her
balked desire, would not agree, he
called her cruel and cold. Susan,
with the heat and confidence of her
fresh bloom upon her, fought with
him, almost in the old arrogant way.
“It can't stay as it is. Don’t you
see? That’s all I'm saying.”
Almost—but without the old
straight and clear direction of her
free imperiousness—because beyond
that statement she dared not go.
She was sobbing and angry, her
hands still clutching with weakened
passion at the edges of the couch,
but a feeling of brokenness lay
within her. The doctor sat in the
big chair that he claimed as his.
His voice was husky. He was al-
most too tired to speak.
“Susan, I'm tired. I've got to
have some time to myself. I've
had this strain for years. I can’t
think of anything. I can’t think
of anything, I can’t do anything
now.” 3
Then go, then go, Susah wanted
to say. But it was only telling her-
self to go. She was bound up in
him. The wold habit of passionate
consolation remained; and she could
not keep her strength or her anger
at the tired appeal of his hands
loosely clasping the arms of the
chair, and the bright remoteness of
pain in his eyes. She went over
and put nerveless arms about him
and laid her wet cheek against his
hair. :
After he had left she lay on the
couch; and then tired, more tired
than he could be, more tired than
anything in the world, she struggled
up through a daze of weakness to
take off her clothes, fold them neat-
ly, wash her face, brush her hair—
as her stern sense of orderliness
still commanded—and lie down on
her. single cot—lie down to the old
dissatisfaction turned now into
apathy.
The next morning the lawn out-
side the windows was not so bright.
The green, still thick and déep
along the edges, beside the sunken
coolness of the old cement walk,
was fading into dry brown at ‘the
center. The leaves had a look of
dustiness.
The doctor came to see Susan as
always: But a sense of estrangement, |
an acutal thing, not the old resent-
ment that had made her turn more
long suspension of action
passionately to him, had crept be-
tween them. Or was he a little
more cautious and infrequent, now
that the eyes of the town were
curiously upon him, and that some-
thing else might be expected of
him?
For imperceptibly the light which
shone upon that image of two had
shifted and brought out the figure
of the doctor into relief. The lift-
ing of the strain was beginning to
tell. He looked fresher, freer, more
vigorous, The gloom had lifted so
that his handsomenesgs was no long-
er mysteriously perceptible through
his aloofness. Anyone could see it
now. He met people with an awk-
ward interest. Nothing held him
back from them—nothing but the
still secret, unacknowledged pull of
his affair with Susan. And they
felt a new respect for him, for it
was plain that he was his own
man at last.
“Well, the poor fellow,” men of.
ten said, when women accused him
of dealing selfishly with Susan, “he’s
been tied down ever since he wasa
kid. Let him stretch himself awhile
before he gets tied down again.”
Women, on the other hand, to
men who still admired and stood
up for Susan, often said with a
hard, small clarity of perception:
“I think he could do better than
Susan now.”
So that no one was really sur-
prised when he started going with
another girl.
Susan knew it long before she
consciously knew it as a definite
actuality, long before her tortured
imagination began to settle and dig
its talons into the acutal image of
now this girl and now that. She
could only turn at night in a rest-
less fever of conjecture and rejec-
tion of the fact itself. She want-
ed to know, and at the same time
skirted all possibility of discovery,
until finally her torture of uncer-
tainty grew more unbearable than
knowledge itself, and forced her to
say to him—a laughing hint that
couldn’t possibly be true, “I believe
Jou ast be going with some other
r mn
He answered her impatiently and
without sympathy, “Well, good heav-
ens, Susan, you played around long
enough! We can't shut out the
whole world forever.”
That answer, little as it told and
incredible as it seemed, was an ad-
mission. And now the torture of her
imagination was worse than any-
thing she had gone through before.
She did not know who it was, Peo-
ple were thoughtful enough to avoid
all mention of the name, and even
of the doctor’s name; but she could
see their knowledge in the curious
conjecturing glances of their eyes.
Her natural swift directness made
her crave to go straight to the
point and learn the fact. But that
seemed
to have bound her into itself so
that she was unable to move hand
or foot out of the new agony of
suspense.
Now, what had she left? But she
could not let him go.
Still, ‘outwardly, the affair seem-
ed to go on pretty much as it al-
ways had. They had their little
dinners together. The warm weath-
er lasted on into the fall; and on
Sunday they were to drive as usual
to the Four Corners.
Susan dragged herself out of her
tired inertia and got up in good
time on Sunday morning so that
she could bathe, wash and wave her
hair, and press her white silk sleeve-
less dress.
She looked out of the window and
saw the doctor coming up the walk.
Her roadster stood out in front. He
looked handsme, large, well-dressed.
Susan felt even more than the old
thrilling leap of pride. She want.
ed to tell everyone that this man
was hers. The time had long pass-
ed when it was ' enough to know
this sweetly in secret.
iarity of going down the walk to-
gether and getting into the car
made her fear look small and fool-
ish, like a night terror dragged in-
to daylight.
“Have a good time!” Mrs. Cal-
verton called. She stood and look-
ed after the couple.
All the same, Susan had the feel-
ing that the large, well-kept sur-
geon’s hands upon the wheel were
not hers ‘to touch. The profile was
strange. She chattered recklessly
to keep him from speaking.
The doctor seemed, after a little :
while—and that might have been
only because the motor wasn’t act-
ing well—to be responding to her.
It was just like all of their drives,
so that, when they came to the top
of the One-Mile Hill, turned aside
from the main road and stopped in
the midst of the tangle of fall flow-
ers, the silence brought back fear
to her with
which blinded her. She sat in in.
credulous stillness; but her heart
was pounding. She tried to say
that she would get out and pick
some goldenrod.
“Susan, look here.”
Even her breathing was suspend-
ed. The world was stopping.
“We've had the best out of this.
Don’t you think so, too?”
Silence,
He turned toward her, and some.
thing like the old pleading broke
through the strained huskiness of
his voice. It was almost like an ac-
cusation.
“You must have known this was
coming as well as I did.” Silence
—“My God, I wish you'd say some-
thing!”
Through her dry throat Susan
forced a muttered “What?”
“Well, just a response. You make
me do it all.”
“What is there to say?”
That was all there was to it.
Susan felt it, in a terrible tired-
ness, as she sat with her slim hands
loose in her silken lap. The great
autumn landcape of brown fields
and tufted trees spread out beyond
the hill. She saw it. But she could
not even feel pain for the difference
between this chance final view and
all the other happy ones.
The doctor felt it. He did not
even try to explain. There was so
much to be said that there was mnoth-
The famil- |
a shock of surprise |
A ————— A TR EAR
ing to be said. And yet there was
little after all. The thing had come
to an end, He sat hunched loosely
over the steering wheel and stared
at the autumn landsc: too.
Nevertheless, Susan did not die
when the affair was over. In fact,
she was aware of other powers in
her that had never been brought to
fullness. In spite of the bleak
dreariness in which she moved, she
resented the finality of her aspect
in the eyes of the town.
For a while she looked at the
men who came into the bank with
a faintly re-awakened interest. She
would have” to work now to getone
of them; but that would be all the
more reason for doing it. There
was old Tommy Rumsey. His wife
was dead. He had always liked
Susan, if he was not quite so apt,
now, to pat her cheek and squeeze
her hand. To him, however, she was
young. He was a rich old codger.
The town would have to yield her,
involuntarily, a place among the
matrons if she married him; and
sometimes it amused one side of her
mind—an earlier side, belonging to
the old Susan, having nothing to do
with the doctor—to conjecture what
she could make him do. Could she
force. him out of that big house in
the country and into a new one in
town? Susan thought she might.
Now, when she was walking home
at night she made long, interminable
plans about what she would do if
she married Tommy Rumsey—only
to lose them abstractedly, if her
eye caught sight of a new car or a
strange person or just anything.
And the other men—the bank ex-
aminer, whom she knew to be a
bachelor; a certain pleasant travel-
ing man; Sid Bartley, who had
started out as a mechanic, but now
with a garage of his own, was a
new possibility—they were not worth
while either.
In fact, Susan felt with an
amazement about which she could
do nothing that she didn’t want to
marry any one. She resented the
patronage in the tone of her old
beaux—she wasn’t done yet!— and
the pitying tone of the older women,
the way in which the town took it
for granted that she was still think-
ing of the doctor. In the bleak
clarity of her vision, she had admit-
ted the truth when he had said
that it was ended. Sometimes she
wondered—if she had told him this
or that at such and such a time—
but she had waited too long until
expectation had frayed out into
nothing. His need and demand had
crushed out of her more tenderness
and passion than perhaps she had
possessed. Why should she, Susan
the most unlikely one, have been
sacrificed to that need? But she un.
derstood Mrs. Calverton in that, too.
She could not really wish it had
never been. She might be happier,
but she would not be what she was
now, not this Susan,
Her love for him had gone too
long balked, half fed, unsatisfied.
All that it had really left was her
practical capability. She took ref-
uge in the shelter of that away
from feeling. It grew restlessly.
She was no longer contented in her
work in the bank. She began to
talk about going West and finding
something else to do. Nothing seem-
ed interesting now, but she could
foresee—at the end ofa long, dim
vista of change—how an interest
might open up. She was not finish-
ed.
But it was finished—her affair
with the doctor—her heart; yes, her
life after all—The doctor was mar-
rying Marjorie Pratt. He was
building a new house and sending
off the old aunt to an institution.
His practice was enlarging. People
took him as he was. But as long
as she livedin this town, they would
never look at Susan without think-
ing of the doctor. (Harper's Maga-
zine.)
5
RATTLERS, COPPERHEADS
ON WAY TO WATER
}
i medal
{
i
Doctor J. Bruce McCreary, deputy
secretary of health, says that the
hazard of bites --from rattlesnakes
and copperheads has increased be-
‘cause of the extreme hot spell.
“These snakes which usually re-
main in the depths of the forests
and mountains are coming to lower
levels because of the drying up of
local water supplies in their imme-
diate locality,” said Dr. McCreary.
“While there is no desire to convey
the impression that it is hazardous
for this reason to be in the woods
‘or near streams, it is suggested that
; tourists and hikers be on the alert
, for a posssible meeting with a veno-
‘mous reptile. While even with the
present dry weather such a meet-
ing is not very probable, it is never-
theless wise to be on one’s guard.”
REAL ESTATE TRANSFERS.
Harmon Bowes, et ux, to Clarence
Buck, tract in Liberty Twp.; $1.
George E. Young, et ux, to Ralph
L. Struble, et ux, tract in Bellefonte;
$1.
Anna Bilger to Clarence Ripka,
et ux, tract in Spring Twp.; $150.
Dennis Quigg, et ux, to Arthur
E. May, et ux, tract in Benner Twp.;
$2,400.
Sarah M. Lemon, etal, to Walter
S. Mandore, tract in State College;
$1.
William Freeman, et ux, to Samuel
Finberg, et al, tract in Philipsburg;
$14,000.
Annie H. Krebs to James P.
Aikens, tract in College Twp.; $100.
William D. Custard, et ux, to
Vera Crawford, tract in State Col-
lege; $1.
Thomazine Lane, et al, to John
S. Walker, tract in Bellefonte; $1.
Clarence Ripka, et ux, to Edward
C. Witmer, tract in Spring Twp.;
$2,500.
Lizzie A. Weaver, Exec, to John
W. Meese, et ux, tract in Spring
Twp.; $1.
—Read the Watchman and get all
the news.