Sharp County record., 1881-03-31

OllO ECOo w 4OOAA u w. AAA'AA ~ I'NN~
furniture"
"He's got lot of money" returned
Andrew, a" and has proposed no end of
times to Violet, Mrs. Wood tells me.
The old idiot hangs round, casting les
yeur dour at Miss Wood. Isn't it cap
ital joke? Ha! ha!"
CHAPTER II.
Toward the middle of December the
Woods found themselves comfortably
ensconced in Paris in one of the many
hotels that look onto the Tuileries Gar
dens. Mr.. Cadbury had been unable to
leave town; so Elliott Beesly had es-
corted the mothes and daughter over
the Channel and had already written to
his friend Andrew, telling him how
things were going on.
1t did not occur to Beesly that any
difficulty could possibly rise out of the
situation. He had in his nature tinge
of old fashioned chivalry, which he Oft
en- enough covered and hid away with
brusque speeches, but he was at the
same time the least susceptible of being
to that emotional side of man that is
engendered by the proximity of pretty
women. He had absolutely nothing of
the tirt about him. Without a shade
of cynicism he often enough confessed
he had never, with the most fascinating
maiden, got beyond the desire of seeing
her happily married to somebody else.
If any one had told Elliott Beesly, as he
lighted his cigar that foggy November
night in Bayswater, that in afew weeks
time he would be madly in love with
the young lady to whom he had just so
coolly bade good night, he would have
smiled upon him commiseratingly and
looked on him as mad. He would have
told him that it wasn't his line of busi-
ness, that the emotions were an extra
to the everyday fare, the heavy price of
which no man in his senses would care
to pay. He would have argued that a
man can help falling in love if he choose,
and that in this case the young lady was
given in away in trust. He would have
talked for half an hour in the same
strain, and convinced everybody, and
more than everybody, himself.
But our theories are, of all things,
variable-we say such and such things
are not, for the simple reason that they
have not happened to us.
1t was, therefore, without a forebod-
ing that Elliott BeeSly took up his abode
in the Rue de Rivoli and proceeded to
offer his services to Mrs. Wood and her
daughter.
Now, the widow was extravagantly
fond of French fnerv, and nothing
would satisfy her but an outfit in Paris
for the next London season. The wor-
thy lady delighted in bargains and was
wont to buy cab loads of goods, of
which she would make no use, for the
simple reason that they were cheap.
Miss Wood was young lady who
preferred her own taste to anybody
else's, and perhaps she was not far
wrong, She designed her own dresses,
had them made up in Baker Street, and
had been known even to invent a hat.
She had a peculiar grace of her own
that had nothing of the dressmaker's
art in 1t; and, moreover, there was
something original in her appearance
that never bordered on the eccentric.
Shopping in Paris, then, had few
charms for Violet; so while Mrs Wood
was trying on mantles and looking at
the latest eccentricity in fans the daugh-
ter was free to wander in the LuXem-
bourg Gallery, or spend a couple of
hours with the Venus of Milo.
1t was thus that Beesly and Violet
were thrown constantly into each 9TH
er's society. Mr.. Beesly could not be
expected to take more than moderate
interest in bonnets and Mrs. Wood was
only too delighted for Violet to have
some one to "don the galleries with.
They had been dawdling one after
noon in the Louvre, and had come down
by the girls special desire into the
sculpture gallery to look at what she
declared to be her favorite statue in the
world-the immortal goddess of Milo.
"How is it?" cried Violet, as she
and Beesly sat looking up at the
statue, "how is it that a great work-a
really great works always new? l
WONDER" she went on, chow many
times | have seen this Venus, yet she
always strikes me as much as the first
time | saw her. 1t is of sensational
pictures and catching music that one
gets so tired"
"You might as well say, why will
you be tired of the shape of that hat the
day after tomorrow" smiled Beesly.
Zone is mere fashion; we continually
alter th the shape of our head cover, but
what we cover remains very much the
same. A real work of art is, suppose,
the pith and essence of a struggle after
what we conceive to be beautiful or
true. Look at this Venus, now. She
affects us perhaps as much as she af-
fected men when she was first hewn
out of the block of marble"
"And there she will stand when we
little mortals are dead and buried; Just
so with that wonderful, inscrutable
smile. Think OF the others that will !