Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1888-04-21
MISS BECKYS HOME
BY AMELIA GRIFFITH,

Miss Becky was going to the OIL
Ladies' Home at last. 1t was a sorr.
fact, but there was nothing else for he
to do, it seemed Who would think O
offering any other home to a poor, al
most helpless old woman, who had out
lived her usefulness? Having passet
her days in other peoples houses, 81
to speak, she might not mind i
al much, perhaps, as more fortunate
being.
eyes," she said, there's vacancy il
the Old Ladies Home, and the hundred
dollars that Parson Amory left me
will pay my way in, but it wouldn't last
long if I began to spend it, you know.
and I shall have a warm bed and my
regular meals without worrying about
where the next ones coming from.
I'm most tired worrying about ways
and means. Seems as though I had
been about it all my life; ever since
father was taken down with heart dis.
ease hearing the class in algebra. Now
that the rheumatism has got the better
of me, so that I can't work in cold
weather, and the doctor says it'll draw
my fingers so that I can't use them
soon, it doesn't seem as if there was
anything left for me in this world but
the Homeland ought TO be thankful
for that"
Miss Becky had had other expecta-
tons in her heyday, when young Larry
Rogers met her and carried her basket;
when his strong arm padded her down
the broad river to church on Sunday
mornings; when they sang together in
the choir from the same hymn-book;
when they loitered homeward in the
fragrant summer dusk, and heard the
whip-poor-will complain and startled
the fre-fies in the hedges as they
brushed by. It sometimes seemed to
Mss Becky as if all this had happened
in another planet. She was young
then, with bloom on her cheek; but
the rheumatism had bent her
figure and rendered her more or less
hopeless at times, yet her dark, velvety
eyes looked out like soft stars, and
the ghost of a dimple still fickered on
her cheek and chin in spite of her sixty
odd years. Miss Becky's father had
been the district school-teacher in
those far-off days of her girlhood. He
had taught her the simple lore at his
command, but it was Larry Rogers who
had taught her music hour after hour
n the empty school-ho"se; they had
oracticed together while he wrote the
score on the blackboard.
But all this had not sufficed to enable |
Ter to earn livelihood. Her educa-
ion, musical and otherwise, had
stopped short of any commercial value.
N those days she never expected to
'arn her living by the sweat of her
'row. Larry was going to give her
'verything. How trivial the little
quarrel seemed to-day which circum-
rented this final resolve of his! But |
What magnitude it had assumed at the
incl On his return from q trip to q |
city, some busybody had
whispered to Larry that Miss Becky
had been seen driving with Squire
Eustis' son Sam behind his trotters.
Sam was just home from college, a
fellow. they said, who
made love right and left and gambled
pit; and when Larry reproached her
With it she had not denied; she had
simply sail: "What then? If you
choose to listen to gossip rather than
wait till you -"
"But you didn't tell me, and I've
been here week."
II had forgotten all about it till Won
me" said Becky.
"It's such an everyday affair for you
70 drive with Sam Eustis!" which in
so stung Becky that she would
lot condescend to explain that she had
carried some needlework up to Squire
Eustis', which she had been doing for
his wife, and that as she left to walk
nome Sam was just starting off with
MS smart chaise and new dapple grays,
md the Squire had said, @Take Miss
Becky home. Sam. and show her their
,aces:s and how she had been ashamed
. refuse their kindness. although pre-.