The River Falls times. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1894-1933, 1897-06-08

also, champions of the lawn, came the
short-skirted. muscular widow and her
athletic nephew. Ere the summer was
gone they knew each other in this quiet
nook as they might not have done after
years of a sitter and more formal ac-
quaintance.
And especially to the admiral and
the doctor were this closer intimacy
and companionship of value. Each
had a void in his life, as every man
must have who with unexhausted
strength steps out of the great race, but
each by his society might help to fill up
that of his neighbor. It is true that
they had not much in common, but that
is sometimes an aid rather than a bar
to friendship. Each had been an en-
thusiast in his profession, and had re-
tanned all his interest in it. The doctor
still read from cover to cover his Ian
Get and his Medical Journal, attended
all professional gatherings, worked
himself into an alternate state of exal-
tation and depression over the results
of the election of officers, and reserved
for himself a den of his own, in which
before rows of little round bottles full
of glycerine, Canadian balSam, and
staining agents, he still cut sections
with a microtome, and peeped through
his long, brass, old-fashioned micro
scope at the arcana of nature. With
his typical face, clean shaver on lip
and chin, with firm mouth, strong
jaw, a steady eye, and two little white
tufts of Whiskers, he could never be
taken for anything but what he was,
high-class British medical consultant
of the age of fifty, or perhaps just
year or two older.
The DOCTOR in his hey-day had been
cool over great things, but now, in his
retirement, he was fussy over trif1es.
The man who had operated without the
culver of a finger, when not only his
patients life but his own reputation
and future were at stake, was now
shaken to the soul by a mislaid book or
a careless maid He remarked 1T him.
SELF and knew the reason. When Mary
was alive" he would say, ''she stood
between, me and the little troubles.
could brace myself for the big ones.
My girls are as good as girls can be,
but who can know a man as his wife
knows him?'' Then his memory would
conjure up a tuft of brown hair and
a single white, thin hand over a cover
let, and he would feel, as we have all
each other after death, then indeed we
are tricked and betrayed by all the
highest hopes and subtlest intuitions of
our nature.
The doctor had his compensations to
make up for his loss. The great scales
of fate had been held on a level for
him; for where in all great London
could one find two sweeter girls, more
loving, more intelligent, and more sym
pathetic than Clara and Ida Walker?
SO bright were they SO quick, so inter
ested in all which interested him, that
if it were possible for a man to be COM
pensated for the loss of a good wife
then Balthazar Walker might claim to
be so.
Clara was tall and thin and supple,
with a graceful, womanly figure. There
was something stately and distin-
guished in her carriage, "queenly'' her
friends called her, while her critics de-
scribed her as reserved and distant.
Such as it was, however, it was part
and parcel of herself, for she was, and
had always from her childhood been
different from any one around her.
There was nothing gregarious in her
nature. She thought with her own
mind, saw with her own eyes, acted
from her own impulse. Her face was
pale, striking rather than pretty, but
with two great dark eyes, so earnestly
questioning, SO quick in their transi-
lions from joy to pathos, so swift in
their comment upon every word and
deed around her, that those eyes alone
were to many more attractive than all
the beauty of her younger sister. Hers
was a strong quiet soul, and it was her
firm hand which had taken over the
duties of her mother, had ordered the
house, restrained the servants, comfort
ed her father, and upheld her weaker
sister, from the day of that great mis-
fortune.
Ida Walker was a hands breadth
smaller than Clara, but was little
fuller in the face and plumper in the
figure. She had light yellow hair, mis-
chievous blue eyes with the light Of
humor ever twinkling in their depths,
and a large, perfectly formed mouth,
with that slight upward curve of the
corners which goes with a keen appre-
citation of fun, suggesting even in re-
pose that latent smile is ever lurking
at the edges of the lips. She was mod
ern to the soles of her dainty little
high-heeled shoes, frankly fond Of dress
and of pleasure, devoted to tennis and
to comic opera, delighted with a dance,
which came her way only too seldom,
longing ever for some new excitement,
and yet behind all this lighter side Of
her character a thoroughly good,
healthy minded English girl, the life
and soul of the house and the idol Of
her sister and her father. A peep into