The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-01-30

shore really Indifferent to this poor
charm of Miss Rhody's, and that was
VIII Mather, who never perceived any
charm at all about her, and who looked
on her with a gOod-natured indulgence
as he would have looked on Ann Math-
er's canary had 1t escaped and come
across his way, and who never thought
of her when he did not see her. Her
pale. thin personality was such a color
less thing beside that of her cousin Ann,
the black-eyed, red-cheeked beauty, or
even beside the tender, smiling lowell
ness of the pretty Sally, whom Tom
Rrieir would have died for, and whom
Hum phrey Lavendar had made his
own She was, in fact, to VIII Mather,
only like the shadows of someone else,
and viii Mather was the only one
whose feeling in regard to herself had
any vital significance to Miss Rhody.
Every time that he came home from
voyage, more bluff and burly and
trumpet toned than before, all the
suggestions of the romance of the deep
seas gathered about him in her fancy
and the whole outside foreign world
came with him. He was the hero of
wild wrestles with wind and weather;
what dangers of night and storm had
threatened him; what triumphs were
his when he brought his white canvas
into port. For Will was now the cap
tain of the AIan-o-Mull, a man of
ana o. IN the village OF
the shore. But to Miss Rhody he had
been as much as this. and more, before
ever he ran away to sea; always an
IDEAL always being of adventure. 1t
might have seemed to another that she
wavered a little in her allegiance when
Humphrey Lavendar took the hand of
his crazy mother as she was dancing
in the street, and put her shawl about
her and led her home, and
Rhody ran and took her other hand.
sharing with Humphrey the shame and
pain OF the thing he was one day to in
herit But it was nothing of the sort;
Humphrey was some one in distress.
and she went TO him just as she Went
TO the hurt creature. out OF the abun-
dance of her hearts tenderness. But
as for VIII, he would never be one OF
those in any distress, for even before
she was a dozen years old she had felt
all that was potent and fortunate, and
that eaptivated all the girls in town
in his strong and reckless nature even
before he climbed the outside of the
meeting house steeple to rescue a par
rot that had taken flight of fancy to
the vane and had hurt its wing and
feared to try its fate downward To
be sure, he was thrashed for IL and
deserved it, said VIII. But I had the
climb
'Tn teach you to brighten your
mother again, you ships monkey"
cried his father. But VIII saw the
twinkle in his fathers eye for all the
blows, ana knew there was bubbling
pride over the boys achievement in the
old sailors heart. "A chip of the old
block" the father was muttering to
himself as he put up the strap. and
that in spite of the fact that he had
been heard to say that he would TO Their
the boy died young than live to follow
his fathers path in blue water
But nothing OF that mattered to
Rhody and to the little public. to Ann
and Flora and Humphrey. to Sally and
Tom Brier and Try Hodge and the rest
of them, to whom the thrashing was an
affair of every day, but the climbing
set their nerves TO thrilling and their
blood TO spinning. They held councirl
among themselves, and knew that soon
or or later il was decreed in fate that
Will Nather would run away to sea.
And he was as good as their word To
sea he went, and when he came back
breezy and brown and rolling in his
gait. he could have had any girl on the
shore for the asking-eXcept Sally 1t
is hardly any sacrifice of her maiden
1nodesty to say he could have had
Rhody; although I do not know but
the asking would have surprised her !
out Of the possibility, for she did not !
look on him as girls look upon a lover ]
but as a subject looks upon a king, as /
slave upon a master; he was the hero 1
of the long, unwritten romance she was !
spelling out and reading every hour I
But VIII Mather hardly knew that 1
poor Rhody existed, other than as part /
of the dim outlines and phantasmagoria I
that fill up the background of all peo-
pies memories. Her cousin AIMS rich |
color, her flashing eyes and sparkling |
teeth, her ringing laugh and gay spirit, !