Catoctin clarion. [volume] (Mechanicstown, Md.) 1871-1940, 1898-04-28
No Z
that sum? How many hands all work.


ing for you?"
"Twelve" said Adrien laboriously.
"Twelvel You must be counting In
your own, Dren, and they don't count
for much at anything yet awhile. You
are wrong, Dren. You generally are
wrong"
The boy received this cutting sum-
mary Of his own inadequacy with COM
posure. He was more deeply interested
in the work Liza had resumed than in
his own possible shortcomings.
Is that going to be hat or cap?"
IA hat"
with a brim and blue ribbon
band?''
"A brim certainly. A blue ribbon
bandl Dren, you are exacting."
II think my grandmother can give
me blue ribbon band. My grandmoth-
er can give me everything want. She
gets everything out of the big chest In
the hall up stairs. My grandmother has
everything. Don't you think SO too?"
Evidently you approve Of your grand.
mother, Dren. ~
"She is better than my other grand
ma was. She says look like my papa.
and sometimes she cries into the big
chest. My papa is soldier. He don't
come to see mamma any more. My
grandfather is soldier too. / am a
gentleman. am not soldier"
Everybody is that who is worth call
ing man nowadays, my boy"
O. l..
"Seth is hero. Seth is martyr.
Seth has to stay at home to feed small
boys, who let their hats get away from
them on duck ponds, and good for moth
ing women, who can neither fight nor
hoe corn"
"Then are you good for nothing,
Liza2'
Eyes, emphatically. Then, with a
ripping laugh: "Dren, you are deli
ciously entertaining. What would we
do without our one small gentlcman?"
There was dash Of triumph III her
voice. She had kept the faith. She had
promised Strong to "see that affair Of
Adrien's wife and boy properly attend
ed to- She was also keeping that other
promise about Mamie Colyer. Her whis-
pered farewell to Strong, "She shall not
leave me until her father or her lover
claims her." had assumed the aspect Of
a solemn obligation, and the professor
daughter had become valued member
of that little colony of heroic women
who filled the big house at Sans Souci
with an atmosphere Of cheerful effort
and brave endurance, without which Its
desolate mistress would have been given
over to despair.
But father and lover still tarried-
tarried through the signloss days when
hope, finding nothing to feed upon,
sickened and died; tarricd through the
short gray days of a somber winter,
when the ungathered crops of Sans Sou
ci, missing the harvester's hand, whit
ened and fell earthward. as uncared for
as tho winters snow; tarried through
springs resurrection days, when the
birds sang kesulgens and built their
nests in the apple trees that shed their
blossoms over the tangled flower beds
in Gabriclla's neglected garden; tarried
through the long, hot summer hours,
when the women applied themselves to
inventive work and Seth grew more
stopping with each days labor over the
growing vegetables that must be served
on the madam $ table He had promised
to take good care Of all these women,
and, with the patient watchfulness OF
faithful dog, he was doing it. Into the
inner temple of their anXiGties and their
emotions he could not enter, even with
the sandled feet. of reverence, but that
neither by day nor by night physical
harm should come to them he had
sworn, and he, too, was keeping the
faith, carrying about with him the
smoldcring fires of his thwarted ambl-
tions chiding himself for the lnean en-
Wy that would leap up flerccly in his
heart whenever he thought of 1.-THE rest
of the fellows"
Liza was "solid comfort" to him in
those days. She would come out to him
where he was hoeing the caDbages or
watering the asparagus bed to talk
over things" their chief topic being
Adrien s affairs.
How quecrly it had all turned out!
Annabcl Summers, the daughter of q
Shingleton milliner, reigning almost su-
preme at Sans Soucl
Liza accounted for it sagaciously:
"After ALL Seth, it was the general
condition Of affairs that made my task
SO easy. Do you suppose if l had walk
ed up to old Mrs. Strong during peace
times, with Adrien just off on one OF his
pleasure jaunts, and presented Annabel
and that boy with the very same evil
dence, she would even have heard me
to the end?'
"No, SIR" said Seth, drawing the
hone briskly across the edge of his hoe.
,..Not she But it was all so entirely
[coNTINUED.l