River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1900-07-26

{ HER LADYSHIP
Observation-Disclosures

TIER LADYSHIP won her name be-
cause of a certain touch of dig
nifty evident when she pressed her ten
toes to the floor and stood erect in her
fannelette bedgown waiting for her
nightly dismissal.
Then her wisps of hair were worked
into candle ends" and drawn away
from her wonderful white ears, and
she held fast in her bosom and Law
ished her love on a hideous Indian ma
hogany doll, which she called Katie S
drefful black baby"
She was a born woman, standing
three feet one; Turk, Terror and a
Tyrant; a delicious lapful, and aged
three years.
Katie's dada was an underwater in
Cornhill. Fitting initials under ships
names on slips of paper day by day
seemed, in abstract, a simple enough
thing TO do. Yet he had served many
toilsome years that he might sit No.
in a marine underwriting-room. He
was deep-shouldered. large-limbed and
Kensington ratepaytr. He had a
taste for admiralty law, and passion
for athletics.
He was straight left" with the
gloves, and good stick" at hockey,
and could sprint a hundred in /.
Kensington Gore was ornamented
with polished Indian clubs and iron
dumb-bells; cross foils were linked to
the walls. There was. besides, a hori-
4a1 IN, ,pl,-
ing ball suspended in his bedroom.
"Katie's mamma was pnk-fngered
petite and unpunctual and as fair as
gold, She made altar cloths, r'atoniC
acquaintance and wonderful shiYering
table iellies. With men she was
moody" and she had a pretty way
with her words. Also she had little
money of her own.
All along her line of lfe-from cradle
to corsets-she held in favor small
things; forget and tiny fairies
seed pearls and ponies, skye terriers
and dainty Moorish slippers. And she
ended, as is fit and seemingly, by mar
rying an extremely big husband, whom
first she flouted, then feared, and final.
~ was proud of. Now she rallied to the
royal nod, pampered his appetites,
pandered to his whims and generally
killed the king with honey.
The fourth character is the other
man. He was almost the very ordinary
of natures handiwork. He was not
much TO look upon, as the phrase runs.
Still there were certain notes and
hng 20 = 10, s.,
nine; the cultivated chivalry and the
suggestion of strength; the practiced
boyishneSs of his voice and manner,
the carefully engendered atmosphere
of mystery. Qle was, in fact. so very
secret man that, instead of putting
his eggs in open baskets, he concealed
them in his tail pockets, and occasion
ally sat on them.)
''Katie's dada" was at this time in
Cairo, swimming in the Nile and see
ing to something about underwriting
Egyptian halls.
She asked all her brothers and all his
sisters to the house in North Grove
Highgate; and the other man came,
too. So often, indeed, that people whis-
percd and wrote TO and fro, and wom-
en- offered her cold cheeks, and men
curious eyes. until she began TO feel al
most that the best way of stultifying
criticism was to justify it.
Her sister, the credenti tailed disputant
of the family honor, at last represented
the general feeling in unmistakable
terms.
But "Katie's mamma" was no cul-
prit, and She burned in the cheeks and
grew tall and beautiful to look upon.
She felt, maybe, prospectively guilty.
which is most uncomfortable feeling.
Jess" she said to her sister, YOU
may 60 TO the place wherefrom the sui
phur comes, and there YOU may sit on
a coal and eat small sour apples
He turned up soon after with some
forced flowers and things, for she was
dancing that evening to Willoughby's
band She confessed to her maid that
she felt strangely fresh that evening.
lie said she looked "ravishing," and
rayed about eternal devotion" and IA
life of consecrated worship" and 9th
er strikingly absurd things. MAIDS.
MAIDS. trust me and test me, darling, :
he concluded.
The upshot was that, being a neg
lected wife and woman of moods. she
sent him away, and said she might
meet him at eight, perhaps, at the
grove, by the bar gate.
1t was still quarter to eight. and he
. 4 Il
la, and the water tumbled from the
leaves of the trees on TO his shirt cuffs
A mail cart sheered past him and
FLASHED him with rich running mud
from the road.
That U'ede him curse the driver. and
he dug his heels into the clay and
gravel, and comforted himself with a
rehearsal of his first words when the
lady should at last appear. He thought
poise of her chin above her furs. and
the light that should live in her eye.
He did not-as men are said TO do in
crises PREJUDICE all that was to come.
Yet now and again. in the full sound
OF passion, little biting notes came
through like the signing of zephyr in
a gale. and left him, that was strong.
feyerish, uncertain and a trifie trembly
at the knees.
Jack Holden had always done him
WELL had always offered him a whole
hand and the choicest il was his To
offer. Then ten-twenty-years into
the future he sped forward and saw
dimly; and the half sight left him
nervous. He remembered how Mrs.
Holden had looked one night when
tired. limp and with a PalIid face. he
had seen her at the flag end of all-in-the-
morning ball.
Ii wanted still eight minutes to the