Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1898-10-06
[coNrlNUED.J
CHAPTER vi.

l..
Mrs. Raymond was growing jealous.
For years, despite those occasional titfs
and spats with which feminine init
macies are so frequently diversified, she
had been Fanny Turner's closest friend.
There had been occasions in the lives Of
both when neither had spoken to the
other for as much as 4S hours, and
when neither believed it possible for
her ever to speak to the other again
In this suspension of diplomatic and
personal relations however, no embargo
existed as to language descriptive of
each others faults foibles or falsifica-
tions. What the two ladies failed to say
to was more than compensated by what
they said of each other, notwithstand-
ing which disturbance of the atmos-
pheric conditions in the fair sky of their
friendship the intimacy lived and
thrived-was even strengthened if not
purified by the brief Hastings of such
summer lightnings and reverberations
of vocal thunder. Indeed it would be
hard to say where in all the til either
lady could have found an intimate save
in the other, for the maids and matrons
then composing the social element of
the regiment had learned wisdom in
their generation, We're under the influ-
ence and guidance of such pure spirits
as Mrs. Stannard, Mrs. Barry Mrs.
Freeman and Mrs. Ray, so that even
domestic and social terrors like Mrs
Wilkins had been tanned into certain
fealty to the new creed expounded by
them, and many man, many wom-
an, had remarked that 1.-THE -th was
mighty different regiment from what it
used to be i'll the days of Lady Pelham
and Arizona.
1t was a better regiment in every
way. much as they had all loved cold
Catnip, :" as they called the colonel, who
led them in the days of their exile, but
who, lucklessly, was too often and dis
astrously led by his wife. The new
commander, like the modern Tommy
Atkins, was every inch a soldier and
every inch man, and though Mrs.
Anterior loved cozy chat with her
cronies as much as any woman alive
she had lived and moved and had her
being in wider social circles too long
not to have learned the golden rule of
silence. Several objectionables had been
eliminated i'll the course of years, some
by transfer to other arms of the service
be it understood, one or two to other
spheres, and still Buxton fingered
among the men and Mrs. Turner among
the women, and it ever there lived
lady blessed with unbounded confidence
in the infallibility of her opinions and
the unerring rectitude of her intentions
it was that same Mrs. Frances Turner.
Other women there were, of course,
to circulate her views, but in bold, in
spring originality of conception there
was none to equal her. Mrs. Turner
might not be alone as disburser of
regimental gossip, but, as Lieutenant
Blake was heard to say, she could start
more in minute than could be stopped
in month.
And now Mrs Raymond was actually
disturbed and jealous because of new,
sudden and mysterious intimacy that
had sprung up between the friend of her
bosom and the hitherto impressive and
unapproachable Miss Maynard. From
meeting only formally an9 semioccasion-
oAAy lAoAo Aau ueSe1opeu dill uuIOOKeu
for and apparently unquenchable desire
for each others company, and where
Mrs. Turner used to be dropping in OH
Mrs. Raymond any morning after her
toilet was completed for the day she had
taken to bustling by en- route to Mrs.
Stannard's, never so much as stopping
at the Raymonds' to explain The mean