Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-09-12
{ 0 j s | n P A I.

daughters-''a letter from young Pat
CantweI, your poor uncle Philips only
son, announcing his arrival in England
after twenty years absence in South Aus
tralia. He says he intends coming to see
rs at once, we being the only relatives he
has on this side Of the world. | had for.
gotten his very existencer'
she is not our first cousin, is he, moth,
er?''
mo; his father and your father were
only half-brothers. But they were devoted
to each other"
81 wonder what he viii be hke?" unused
the eldest Miss Cantweu
awful Colonial, you may be sure, .
sighed Ethel
''Why, yes, fear So" said Mrs. Cant
well L can barely remember him as g
little fair-haired boy in knickerbockers
You know his people all emigrated few
years after married your poor father.
nave never held communication with any
of them since my widowhood. However
Pat now informs me that his father and
mother have been dead some years, and
his only sister is settled in Van Diemen's
Land. How time fiesr'
WAS it not uncle Philip, mother, who
was SO kind to you when-When poor papa
got into such trouble" asked Kitty Can't
well
Eyes; he and his wife Rose did their best
for US, though indeed that was not much,
for they were always in difficulties them.
selves, poor people A careless, spend
thrift, good-for-nothing race were those
Cantwells, every one of them, as l can tell
to my cost. All. my dear girls, continued
the mother, feelingly, '1et me never cease
impressing on you the warning of my fate!
If you value your future-if you care for
peace, pleasure, happiness in this world
never marry poor man!'
mo, mother, we never willp' the girls
replied, in a sweet treble chorus.
Mrs. Cantwell of the Laurels had been
left an almost penniless widow at the age
of thirty, burdened with five little girls.
She had married for love, against the con-
sent of all her people, a good-looking
young lrishman of hopeful happy ma
Gure, but of extremely improvident habits;
and she had lived bitterly to repent her
cholce-lived to repent it during the long
Wearisome struggle in which she had
wasted the best years of her life. Yet she
had fought brave fight in the sacred
5cause of motherhood, lad coaxed, cajoled,
intrigued, made friends with the rich and
powerful, had stopped to conquer, and had
succeeded. After an absence of nearly a
quarter of century, she returned one day
10 the town of her youth, and presented
herself and her attractive family before
well-to-do elder brother who had never
married. Mr. Butler professed pleasure
at seeing his sister, approved of his nieces
their appearance, manners, and educa-
tion-and finally, on condition of being
held free from all further monetary re-
sponsibilities in connection with them,
bestowed on Mrs Cantwel an extremely
pretty cottage-residence surrounded by
two acres of land. The cottage was most
conveniently situated-outside the smoke
and noise of the city, and yet well within
the haunts of men, both legal, commercial
and military.
/ With a restful sigh the anxious mother
settled down, after her wanderings in for
eign lands, among the hackneyed haunts
of the impecunious Briton, and soon the
Laurels became one of the most attractive
of man-traps in the neighborhood. The
drawing room was long low room daint-
fly but economically upholstered and
draped in the latest artistic fashion, two
French windows opened on to the lawn
and the well-kept tennis-court, whence a
shady walk led to a charming little rose
bower: and beyond that again stretched'an
old-fashioned kitchen-garden, where on
summer evenings the girls might be seen,
clad in the freshest of chintzes, wedding,
clipping, watering, assisted by kind-heart-
ed SWANS who had the entree of the prem
ises. Friends old and new rallied round
the family, though few indeed of the old
ones recognized in Mrs. Cantwell, care
worn, wasted, yet still distinctly elegant,
the blooming young bride who had left
them so many years before Toll and
trouble had left a soaring mark on the fair
brow; her very nature, too, had changed;
she had not been purified by the furnace
of afflictiOn, but, on the contrary, harden
ed and embittered. To her all mankind
was divided into two great sections-eligi-
bles and ineligibles-men who would
make good husbands for her daughters
and men who would not Her daughters
were on her side-she found no difficulty
with them; as they had been trained, so
they locomotive as pretty, charming
accomplished, yet as worldly and artificial
young persons as this artificial century
could produce. She would have no trou-
BILE with them. for they had learned enough
of the cruel and debasing school of adver-
sity ever to court it for their own.
Afternoon-tea was the great institution
at the Laurels: thrice week Mrs Cant
vel was at home in her modest way to
any friends who chose to drop in. She
could afford no costlier manner of recep-
tion, she frankly admitted and few young
men on whom she and her daughters
smiled wished for any more elaborate style
of entertainment. In fact, SO charmingly
and sweetly did these five damsels receive
their guests that after half q dozen calls
young Alfred Robinson, of the Indian
Civil Service-who had been paying at
tention TO Miss Dora Grains, his rich
brewers neutrality-suspicious. invited
the eldest Miss Cantwell to preside at his
tea-table in a valley of the Ne1gherries,
which invitation she had gladly accepted,
to the entire appreciation of her family.
Maud, the second girl, taking her place at
the vacant board, had soon engaged the
affections of a rising young barrister with
some private means, to whom she was to
be married after Christmas. There yet
remained three minated, one of whom
Miss Ritty-was rather a hopeless case.
She was the only dark blossom on the
family bush, utterly unlike the other girls,
who, taking after their mother, were tall,
slim, and stately, fair-haired and blue
eyed, while Kitty was short, rather stout,
with a bright brown face, gray eyes, and
dark, curly hair. She was not at all i'll
looking, but she certainly managed to
mar the family harmony.
One of the maternal theories concerning
Kitty and with which the rn11rn,r lady her.