The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1900-10-25
Just afhe Old. Old Story"

! minimize the unintenklondl Eu0eneSS OIL
the village towards Miss Wilkins. but in
their hearts they fumed at it.
They simply didn't know what to ex-
pect," explained Airs. Stone, smoothing
a wrinkle out of blue-check apron and
making a bigger one in her forehead
They were looking for horrible bite
stocking. with vinegary countenance and
uncertain age, and you've simply queered
all their preconceived notions"
Miss Wilkins smiled a wintry BIT of
resignation.
well, so long as they don't cut stats
out of the shutters" she said. and then
she broke of the sentence, digging q
little shoe-tip into the crimson pattern
of the Smyrna rug.
But if there was no peering IN at the
Stones windows enough of the village
curious came in at the hospitable door
! way-the invited and the unlimited the
tolerable and the tolerated.
None of the Stones can remember TO
this day just when DR.. Charles Freeman
bachelor physician, handsome. polish
ed. and perhaps curious--hrst came. Not
even the garrulous Lottie Green, who
must have been there, could have told
/ how he staid But before Mss wilkins
! had made up her mind at last to go
back TO Boston the Stones were con-
scious of the fact that he had been
there good many times in the course
of a few weeks.
Somehow, when she was gone, the du-
ties of physician became unconditional
ly commonplace to the young doctor. To
him his whole little world was jaundiced.
gray of tongue and leaden-eyed. He
went the rounds of practice, distinct
| psychical neutraliZer of every prescrip-
ton that he ordered filed.
| Makes me feel S If I ought TO git
up and go to work when l see how
you're lookin,'' was Mrs, Bosticks way
of putting it, as she turned her own
/ white face towards the sallow, troubled
features of the doctor.
He, too, began to realize that some
thing was the matter within himself. lie
diagnosed his case one day when he met
Hannah Stone in the street.
i've just had the dearest letter from
Mary Wilkins" she said beaming. "lf
you will come to see us tonight I'll read
| what she says of you; you know, we
haven't seen you In an age"
Going to the Stones, and Miss Will
! kins not there? Instead, DR.. Freeman
took the first train for Boston. He had
4 no idea Of what he was going to say
I when he got there. He kept all thought
of that out of his mind. Perhaps he
would not say anything at all. At least,
he would have a respite from bilious
tongues, low fevers, and the pulse-count-
ings of the sich-bed.
From window Of the train he sat
watching the New England hills waltz
ing to the rhythm of the trucks, and
gradually slipping behind in the purple
distance. He could go to Boston, at
| least. At the most, he could go to
her house and pay his respects. Beyond
that-but he turned from the landscape
and scowled at his timidity.
Between the time of DR.. Freeman
leaving his practice in an impetuous
haste and his coming back TO it In a
haze, to find all the little sworld of the
ailing tinged with romance, the Doctors
consciousness could not differentiate the
real, the psychical and the imaginative.
| He had been at work, drudging among
the selfish sick. There was some sub
conscious impression of sliding land
scapes, blurred sky lines, noises of con-
gested traffic, hopes, fears, doubts. Then
face somewhere-dim, far off, and
dreamy Then Metuchen again, exalted,
pinnacled-the Mecca of his ambition.
But before he left the woman who had
haunted him she had put the seal of
secrecy upon his mouth. She had told
him that she loved him; he saw that in
her face when she greeted him. But
with a young woman's unreasoning in
sistence she exacted the vow of secrecy
from him. He was pleased to share it,
at the first. 1t was his and hers; a joint
! thing in which they had equal share
to the exclusion of all the world.
Sharing this, they watched the days
and weeks, and months slide into years
She was growing. always. Her name
was known where his could never be
sounded, and he was having no part in
it. He had urged marriage, but always
she had answered, wait" It was
selfish of her, he thought He felt that
she was growing away from him; that
every laurel that came to her might have
been a decoration for his own grave.
! She in turn, felt that he would deny
! her some of the fruits that were in her
grasp, awaiting only the plucking. There
would be time enough when she had
tried her wings. From whatever height
! she might go she had told him that in
| the end she would be willing to futter
down and be wife to him. as woman
| had been wife TO man since Eden. That
| should have been enough.
So she wrote, and eased her heart
burnings. So he went on in the dull
treadmil of doing succor to the sick of
! body, and nursing his own souls pain.
And the years widened between them.
Nobody knows who wrote the last let
! ter. Nobody knows who spoke the first
word in anger For years are gone, and
her secret was his secret and their secret
until a recent yesterday.
One day, a little more than year
ago. business called DR.. Freeman TO the
quaint old Town of Plymouth. It was
IL - -
! grim fathers was there and the new Of
! the fashionable and frivolous East He
had looked on idly, till one evening a
/ face rose ont Of the gray mist that was
| driving in from the Atlantic, and stop
/ ped him in his tracks. Ten years of ro-
nance and tragedy swept over him as
he stood The face out of the fog smiled
bent little forward, and was gone.
| II was not a dream. 1t was no soul
! phantom, conjured up 10 deceive him
He turned and followed a dim figure
ahead Of him until It turned into the
/ doorway Of a resort cottage. Then all
| night he walked in the complaining
sands. where the long breakers swept
IN, with its singing spray, that wetted
him through and through.
At the hotel the porter could tell him
o. yes Miss wilkins had & cottage there
She wrote books-piles OF them. Since
sne hdd come 70 - 'uouAh thts hAn
scarcely sold anything else az the hotel
bookstand.
She was at home when DR.. Freeman
called. She looked neither pleased nor
sorry. so far as he could read her face.
''Ycu-y0u have tried your wings
Mary he asked. when the weather vas
+ no longer a topic
She straightened up, and a husb cre7t
into the rims Of her ears and burned
the-e
II 90 not understand you" she said,
{ slowly