Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1902-06-26
= Pa I" and Polly
Moberly
Bv SUSAN HUBBARD MARTIN

8
merry voices. Some one was tuning
mandolin to the piano, and there
was futtering of music leaves.
Company had come in, as usual, to
spend the evening. The Moberly
girls, that is, the three older ones,
all had light hair, blue eyes, and
lively, vivacious manners that
proved very attractive to the young
people in the quiet villa ge.N
PA" Moberly nobody knew much
about. He sat out in the kitchen
most of the time. It was a dingy
little room, and often in the evening
he had no light; only the dull glow
of the stove and the red sparks of
his old-fashioned pipe.
Pa Moberly was a little, timid,
shrinking man. He had faded blue
eyes, bent shoulders and toil-worn
hands. He had worked hard for his
girls. He had ungrudgingly given
them his best. 1t seemed too bad
that now he was old and they were
grown to womanhood they did not
care.
When Mrs. Moberly was alive,
things We're different. He had his
comfortable easy chair then in the
sitting-room; his slippers, too, and
there was the lounge to rest on
when he was tired.
But as his girls grew up, pretty,
strong-willed and altogether selfish,
Pa Moberly found himself banished
from his comfortable quarters. A
number of cushions too fine for use
adorned the old sofa, and his arm
chair had three tides on it. He was
soon made to understand that he
was not wanted.
It was not long before he began
to stay in the kitchen, and by and
by he sat nowhere else. He knew
every figure on the dingy papered'
walls, and the only chair he had to
sit in was a straightforward wooden
one, IN which he could not rest.
He used to long sometimes for his
old corner in the sitting-room, with
its lights, its laughter and it's music,
but to his gentle hints the girls gave
.cant encouragement. "They didn't
want pa around" they told them
selves.
The lonely, tired old man had
many thoughts as he sat in the
kitchen night after night in solitude,
and he used sometimes to ponder the
question in his gentle heart as to
whether, after all, it paid to bring
up girls who were ashamed of you
when you were old.
Polly did not know about the
changed condition of affairs. Polly
was the youngest, and more like her
mother than any of the others, be-
ing small. quiet and brown-eyed.
She had been staying for three
years out in Pennsylvania with an
invalid aunt for whom she had been
named. Poor. Aunt Bassett was dead
now, and to-day Polly had come
home again. She was upstairs now,
busy in the small back room that the
girls had forgotten to make ready
for her
x AS Pa Moberly sat alone in the
kitchen tonight he was thinking of
Polly. In his yearning, fatherly
heart there was a faint stirring of
hope.
There was chance that he might
take some comfort with this, his
youngest daughter. He had felt that
from the time she was born. She
wasn't like the other girls, and she
had seemed so unfeignedly glad to
see him. He felt the pressure of her
young arms yet about his neck, and
her kisses still lay warm upon his
furrowed cheek.
In the darkness of-the old kitchen
he brushed a tear from his eye. He
was thinking of Ma Moberly, too,
and of her gentle, tender, womanly
like their mother.
Just then Polly came in. She went
quickly to his side.
''Why, pa" she cried, "what are
you sitting in the kitchen for, and
in the dark, too? Is anything the
matter?"
In the friendly darkness Pa Mo-
berly- took the little hand and
stroked it. Nothing, Polly he said.
II always sit here
Polly seated herself on his knee.
"Always sit here?' she cried, in sur
prise. Don't you go into the sit
ting-room evenings as you used top
Pa Moberly shook his head. NO."
he faltered.
But why?" insisted Polly. "You
don't mean to tell me you don't sit
in your old chair any more?"
Pa Moberly's chin quivered. Polly
did not know, and it was hard to tell
her. Polly was like her mother.
''Alice likes to keep that chair for
company he said, slowly. "Oh, I
don't mind the kitchen so much.
now,'' he added, as cheerfully as he
could. ''At least I won't now, since
you've come home. I do miss the
old chair some. but it's all right.
1.-The girls don't want me in there,
Polly" he went on, huskily. 'Thev're
vnuno and there's ALWAYS coynpor,,