The Warner sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1885-1???, 1886-04-30

| clear evenings, you see, for me to enjoy
the charms OF their society, and
she stopped for a second, "and the so.
ciety OF their friends" Here a bit OF
lace trimming on her muslin dress
gave a little scratching noise-her
| fingers had torn it.. Bother
"My dear Bess?" her mother cried
in her calm way.
"The bother belongs to the torn
lace, my dearest, not to-to-the other
thing. Shall | tell your" The girl
| turned her face round to her mother.
"You had better dear, Ishould say"
Mrs. Lane did not feel calm in her
| innermost heart. Mothers get pre-
sentiments.
you knew that Clint boy?"
"Clint boy"
"Well, scarcely a boy, I suppose,
Seeing he is OF the ripe age of 27. He
has actually asked me to marry him!
Presumption, isn't it?"
"If you think so. I suppose you
told him so?'
"Mumsie dear, could l be so rude!"
and Bess linked her hands upon her
mothers knee. "But | NEAR it Sc
riously-qrite truen she nodded. II
mean it's quite true that he wishes
wishes-what | said just now"
"Dear, dear, and you only Nineteen
, II feel fifty, dear, really, ever since |
! came home, and hayeha time to think
it over"
We need not give any more of this
conversation; a fact, looming in the
! future, grew out of it, and became a
very present reality. BesS was en-
gagged, and would, early in the coming
year, be married to Michael Clint.
1t was certainly not a brilliant out
look. Young Clint had no prospects
IN England, but had the promise of q
clerksmp-a first rate clerkship-in q
merchants house at Valparaiso.
And" said Aunt Mary, "f thegirls
had had more suitable h~ome-society
they would not become so fond OF
gadding about, and would not have
known so much Of their friends
brothers friends. You'll see L am
right, Elizabeth, when they all have
done the same thing"
Whereat Mrs. Lane drew up her
pICCIJ ldAI uCOuB oLlu "ho"SAOoA Al o
lower voice than usual:
"Ishall be content, Mary with other
sons-in-law if they equal Michael
Clint"
Christmas was over, and the Shore
house had much business going on In
Lane should shrink from the idea OF
losing Bess-perhaps erfavorite child,
because 81 much the opposite of her
self-but she looked upon the starting
In life abroad asno unreasonablemat-
terra Had she not done the same her
selfH and had not her husband made
the BarDadian home a paradise for
her? He had not left her rich, but he
had left a competence; surely for Bess,
she could be content if her life were
only a s good as her own had been.
But she cried a bit over the making OF
the girls wedding clothes.
The Shore House looked somewhat
desolate. The gay flowers had
gone from the garden, the trees were
leafess, snow lay grimy on the barges
outside the high wall; beyond was the
slow, heavy black river, and again be-
yond it was sharper blackness on the
farther bank, where mountains of piled
Goals we're waiting to be towed down
the stream. Mrs. Lane sat sewing by
herself. All the girls were out that
afternoon, Bess making rounds in her
district for the last time, the other
two shopping in town.
A young maid opened the door and
asked if her mistress "would have
some tea or waitfor theyoungl ladies"
"Oh, wait-certainly watt" what
did the mother want with tea or any
such creature comfort when her girls
were all away?
She stitched on, and thoughts we're
plenty. Had she really done wrong
by fixing herself in the Shore House?
Would thegirls really have had bright
er chances, if she had carried them to
a more fashionable locality? Her sis
ter Mary was wise-worldly-wise. And
she looked round on the spacious,
| dear old room. How the old furni-
| ture looked just the thing in it, how
| the very shabbiness OF the deep Grim
son draparies looked venerable and
respectable in such a spacious dignity
| OF a room! No, she could not have
been wrong.
SO she unused, comforting and wor-
rying her soul by turns.
Then the girls came in, and very
soon Michael Clint came too, and
there was MS more dreaming over
good or i'll, but in it's place glad, hope
full planning.
Clint had been from the Saturday
to the Monday down at his godfa'
theirs, in Northamptonshire. This
was only Monday evening, and he was
full of all he had seen and done. HI
had a bright way with him; he could
tell a story well, and he could make
amusing pictures out Of very small
suggestions.
One thing we have to pick out OF al