People's voice. [volume] (Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas) 1890-1917, 1899-01-17
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE MEPHISTO CAP.

You had a good many, hadn't you!
Well, guess!"
Let me see. Madeline Kearney.
Oh, you tell me, sister. I'm too tired
to guess. That railroad has shaken
me all to pieces in the last hundred
! miles"
"Well, then, if you're too tired to
exert your mind-Edna Barsom!"
ooh! And she marries-"
Bob Bristol, of all men. Old
enough to be her father, isn't hep"
Cortell had been away five years in
tne west, and had just made a long
journey in order to spend two or
three weeks at home with his mother
and sister. He had come back, it
seemed to him, much more than five
years older than he was when he left.
There was upon him now the steady.
ing pressure of large responsibilities,
for he was very near to being the
head of a large business enterprise.
All that he saw-even the faces of his
mother and Sister-reminded him Of
what he had been when his eyes last
fell upon those scenes and those
faces, and he found himself, as he
stretched at full length on the lounge,
wondering how he could ever have
been so frivolous, and so joyously
careless of consequences in every
thing, as he had been in the days that
now seemed to him to belong to the
dim distance of history.
$50 women can forget sometimes,
you see," his sister continuing her
talk.
Bob's thoughts were wandering
back to the past. Presently he ex-
claimed somewhat suddenly. "By
lingo, Clare, believe 1 have some
thing. Let me see. When do you say
Edna is to be married? May?"
middle of May, I believe"
"And this is the middle of April.
By jingo! l wonder whether I ought
to take it to her, or send it?"
THAT'S your second by jingo' in
one minute. Send what? Wedding
present."
"Eh? Yes, of course I must send
a wedding present. 1 knew Bristol
quite well. He's an older man than
am, isn't he?"
That evening Calvin Cortrell IN
packed big leather trunk in the pri-
vacy of his own room. He took cut a
tin box that looked as if it had been
designed originally to hold cash. He
unlocked the box and took out pack
age after package of carefully tied up
papers-receipts, cancelled notes
memoranda of many kinds. Under all
these was a leather-cased daugerro-
type of his mother. Last of all, I'M
der the case, was some tissue paper,
and, neatly folded in the tissue paper,
were a pair of very much faded kid
gloves.
Cortrell took out the tissue paper
package, replaced the daguerrotype,
the various bundles of memoranda,
cancelled notes, receipts and other
business documents, locked the tin
box and sat down to think.
He laid the faded gloves on little
writing table before him, drew up a
chair, rested his elbows on the table,
and supported his head on his two
hands. As the faint odOr of the dis
inferred gloves came to his nostrils,
a smile, half of amusement, half OF
tenderness played over his face.
"But the question is, how the deuce
am to do it?" he said aloud to him
self after some minutes of brooding.
The smile on his face grew more
and more tender, presently he sighed,
and then spoke again to himself.
'That has nothing to do with it now,
old man. That was long ago. Yes,
you can't Keep these things now.
You've got to do it."
Edna Barsom certainly had been a
little disconnected when the news
came to her that her sweetheart of
five years before had suddenly made
his appearance in the town just at
the time when herr engagement to
Bristol had been made public. She
was not wildly conscious of any feel
ing for Calvin Cortrell that could
have been construed as disloyalty to
her fance, but she knew only too well
how recklessly tongues will wag in
small town, where each man's-or
woman's-business is the business of
all, and, considering many things,
Cortrell's sudden appearance just
then, after continuous absence of five
years might very plausibly be made
to bear a significance that would dis
turb the smooth current of her en-
gagement. There had been rumors
that Mrs. and Miss Cortrell would,
some time or other, go west to make
their home with Calvin, but no one
had expected to see him back in his
former home.
Edna sat before the fire two days
after Calvin Cortrell's arrival, and
was meditating over these things,
when Cortrell himself entered. She
was looking for visit not from him,
but from Bob Bristol. Nevertheless
she found little or no difficulty in
meeting him with conventional care.
At first, that is. Her old friend-or
sweetheart-lost but little time in
coming to the particular business OF
his call, and it certainly startled her
little when he said, Il am very glad
l found you alone"
"Glad?" she said. ooh, yes. 1t is
MIA IN ha ahla IN hova q l;ftla obo.