Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1884-11-01
SELECTIONS.
HIS LIES ONE HOLIDAY.

Huntingdon Wayne was thirty
five, and had never yet been in love.
He had worked hard and we'll and
had made "a fortune which even he
felt would enable him to marry with
out being recklessly imprudent, and
he began to think it was time to
decide upon a wife who should salts
ty his somewhat fastidious require
ments. She must be of stately
and nObly presence-Wayne had
rather an idea of fine woman not
too young nor too emotional; Wayne
was a person who hated scenes-in
short, she was to be woman made
to order, and he found 1t more
difficult to discover her than he had
at first supposed.
1t was with a feeling of something
as akin to failure as his well regu-
lated mind ever INDUCED in that he
ordered his portmanteau packed for
fortnight's visit to Newton on Sea,
and tore himself away from the fas-
cination of club and office life to pay
a long promised visit to his old
friend, DR.. Marshall. He had seen
nothing of the Marshalls for years
past, though there was a tie of old
associations between them, and even
something of sadder interest.
Five years ago, when Wayne's uncle
offered him a berth in the tea bust
ness, of which he was now the head,
he extended a like offer to Hunting.
don's younger brother, Jack but
Jack, always something of hot
headed fellow. took offense at some
word or deed of his elders, and re-
fused the offer. Soon after he took
some post on the east coast of Afri-
Ca, and went ont with high hopes of
the fortune he was to bring back
and lay at Hetty Marshall's feet.
Huntingdon heard of the engage
ment with some contempt for the
folly which possessed two young
people without penny; but when
three years later, news came of poor
Jacks death out in Zanzibar, the
little bride that was to have been
passed out of his mind, and it was
only when an invitation was extend
ed him from the Marshalls, who
were at Newton-on-Sea for Hetty's
health, that he thought of her exist
ence crossed him again.
He had not even seen her since
she was little child in pinafores,
aud when he was brought up, OIL
the evening he arrived, to the side
of crimson hammock swung be-
tween two tab pine trees, and istro-
duced to slight, pale girl, whose
great blue eyes were raised to his
with a pathetic gentIeness and sweet
ness, a feeling such as in his thirty
five years of sensible life he had
never before experienced shot
through him with a thrill of wonder,
and almost beyond bewilderment.
He took in his own the small, fragile,
white fingers, aad then laid them
down almost reverently on the soft
cushions amid which she lay.
L suppose if any one had asked
him then and there whether he be.
lieyed in love at first sight, he would
have answered as contemptuously
aud yet, for all that, he was as deep
in love as ever man yet fell at
one blow. He told himself it was
a pity-a pity that only grew as the
days passed by, and be saw how
frail and delicate a creature her
great trouble oftwo years had left
her, it seemed to him it was duty to
try to atone to her for all the suffer
ing; as loss she had undergone; as
ii his life ought to make up to her
for poor Jacks death, somehow.
Strange, that duty had never such a
zest and a pleasure in it before.
She was thing SO new to his ex.
perience, with her pleading blue
eyes, her soft little ways, and the
pathos that hung about all that she