Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1902-04-11
CHAPTER 1. \.

much interest in me as a hero of
strange adventures on my own &C.
! count; for how can you make regula-
ton hero out of a fellow only five feet
four in his stockings, with hair which
rude people call sandy, short nose
(some people call it pug nose, but
that l deny), and skin all over freckles.
/ The thing couldn't be done, that's
clear. So it is not in the character of
hero that pose in the relation of the
strange events which have befallen me
during the last two years.
But somebody does come out in the
story as bit of hero; and if only for
the sake ofrecording an uncommon in
stance of some fine qualities in this
] person, think the story is worth the
telling.
had always been weakly, miser-
able specimen of humanity, catching
measels and whooping cough and
Group and things whenever they were
to be caught as child, and following
up this record as a young man by
breaking down under the least strain,
whether of work or amusement.
1 AS my father, Sir Edward Blair,
whose only son am, was a rich man,
perhaps ! need not say which sort of
strain it was I oftenest broke down
under!
had left Oxford and had been loaf
ing about between town and my ia
Tiers place in Yorkshire for a couple
OF years, when my health gave way so
completely that was ordered a sea
voyage.
Goodness knows how it was my IA
Their had conceived the idea that a
cruise on one of the big advertising
pleasure yachts was only long orgie
On his own yacht l refused to go, as
he always shipped with him company
| of fossil friends, contemporaries of
his own boyhood, who sat around me
and talked to me and talked to me and
made things uncomfortable for me all
the time.
So my passage was booked on one of
the Castle" liners for voyage to the
Cape, which was, was assured, to set
me up and bring me back to England
picture of health and manly beauty.
There were not many saloon passen-
gers on board, but among the few
there were l soon found two I liked the
looks OF.
The one was brisk and active man
OF about 60 years of age, with white
hair and well-trimmed white beard
and mustache; his merry blue eyes
and fresh-colored, kindly face at once
took my fancy. Something about the
cut of the man made me prepared to
learn that he was doctor; and per-
haps I was helped to this conclusion
by the exceeding interest my own sick
ly appearance evidently aroused in
him.
His name was DIR. Mullion.
The other person I liked the look Of
was, of course, girl.
She was jolly girl and no mistakel
And as pretty as pictured I'm not
very good hand at description, espe-
cially of girls. When you like girl,
or admire her. or whatever you call it,
she seems somehow TO get into your
head, and make you see her through
special sort Of glass that takes away
from what's wrong and adds to what's
right in her, till she seems to you quite
a different sort of person from what
she seems to everybody else.
But Jennie Atkinson was beauty,
and it was not only who thought so,
for all the men on board were mad
about her. If I were to take her to
pieces and give the measurements of
har Il
what colors painter would have used
in representing her hair and complex
ion, shouldn't be q bit nearer
to the real description of her as
she was. But she had one of those
faces that the word lovely seems
made for, and there's an end of it.
And as she wasn't tall, and she wasn't
short. and she wasn't stout and she
wasn't thin, nor very fair nor yet very
dark, all shall say is that her eyes
We're just the prettiest ever saw, and
that they sometimes looked blue and
sometimes looked gray, and that she
was as lively and amiabIe as she was
good looking.
fell over head and ears in love with
AASA az ohSSs anu = W ShI ouC VI lily way
to be particularly civil to her father.
baldheaded stock broker of the most
unattractive type.
But the men on board couldn't have
made more fuss with him il he had
been the prince of Wales.
Not that ought to sheer at the old
boy. For, he singled me out for his
particular favor. and did his best to
encourage his daughter to look upon
me as kindly as he did himself. Ihope
] am not doing the old gentleman in
justice in surprising that the fact of
my being the only son of man of
money and position had good deal to
do with this.
But pretty Miss Jennie, like all beau
ties, had views of her own, and she
would have none of me.
Now, if she had preferred to me any
one of the half dozen awfully nice
young fellows there were on board
am quite sure l should have been man
enough to take her rebuifs easily.
But she chose to bestow herunmistak-
able favor upon the very man of all
those on board to whom had taken
an immediate and intense dislike.
This was FELLOW named Dick Mullion,
nephew of the good doctors, and one
of the most forhidding looking chaps
e have ever seen.
TT. !. + ~ Z