The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1877-01-05
81 CAME TO ASK

Two pretty, old-fashioned cottages
standing near each other on q secluded
tree-shaded country road, separated by
little meadow, which from the birth
of spring to the death of autumn re-
ioiced In waving green grasses and white
daisies and yellow dandelions, and after
that wore a robe woven of snowfiakes
as fair and pure as when they fell from
the skies, until old winter, to whom the
robe belonged, hearing the returning
bride ask for the violets. gathered it
about him and vanished again.
In one of them, the larger, in front
of which was neatly kept lawn,
and al the back a small hot house and
miniature vegetable garden, lived Miles
Guernsey and his man Mike, the one an
old bachelor, the other, as he described
himself, ga wildly man, thanks be to
the Lord that stint her rest"
In the other-Rose Cottage as they
called It, for in rose time it was COM
pieteiy surrounded by roses; they filed
the space in front and clambered over
the porch and up the sides of the house
had lived a quiet, elderly couple for
many years, until about month before
my story Gf it may be dignifed by that
tite) begins, when they went to heaven
ON the very same day, as they had often
prayed to, loving old souls, and left
Rose Cottage waiting for new tenants.
" last as I'd got comfortably settled, I"
grumbied Miles Guernsey, "to be NIL
upset again Other old men and women
live I'll they're hundred. Why couldn't
these have done so, instead of dying at
the carly sge of eighty And there's
no knowing who'll take the cottage.
Somebody with cats, dogs, aud babies,
I've 80 doubt---three kinds of animals
dettS'
Tlrue fur ye, boss" said Mike,
wI't Al ominous shake of the head.
There was something else Mr.. Guern-
sly insisted he detested, and that was an
Old MID. "a man," lac used to say,
dou't need smiles and kisses and pet
names and children hanging around him
TO keep him sweet, but a woman does.
Or course some OF the poor things can't
help their forlorn state the men don't
propose, or they do and run away, or
Their r0renfs cut up rough, or they have
Invalid relations TO take care Of. I'm
very sorry for them they have lay
'hesrticst sympathy but, ali the same, 1
don't ike 'em."
Al so when Mike came one lovely
June morning to tell his master the cot
taFc was rented, adding with sly grin,
AT shUre it's ovid maid an her
mother Mr. Guernsey said something
Of which he ought to have been
ashamed, and which, for that reason, [
sban't set down, and then went Oh, ear
castically. land now we'll have all sorts
OF 's'oeet, GINNING pets, 1 suppose /;
but ii any OF them come near my prem
Uses -furicusly-" poison 'em,
drown EN-, wiring their necks. Do you
hear, Mike 2"
Faith, do, said Mike, grirnly.
- Two lived here ten years." resumed
tic master, "in peace and quiet, driven
here by an old maid in the first place,
aud IL will be hard indeed if am driven
away by another. With a piano or
guitar, no doubtl"
Aither that last or a fiddle, sur, T"
said Mike. "I sor the gurril a. carryin'
II IN Yesterday in it's own nate little
smell play aud sing from morning
TIL night, out of time and tune, and [
shall be obliged to close all the doors
and suifocate."
Anyhow" suggested Mike, "there
can't oe no babies"
Thank heaven for that =" aa;d Mr.
HueTnsey, iervently; though 1 don't
KNOW out what the guitars worse. You
can scare young children by making
faces at EN-. When do they move in
Nike Z"