Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1903-01-07
CHAPTER XIV.


haska was a trading post on the In
dian frontier. Later it became the
market town of a wheat growing re-
gion, and it was of the wheat grow
ing era that Jasper Grierson was a
product. He was a young man when
he went overland to Colorado in the
wake of the Pixies Peak excitement,
and his townsmen saw him no more
till he returned in the vigorous prime
of age, wealthy, and the father of a
daughter who presently began to re-
construct the social fabric of. Wa
haska upon model of her own de-
vising.
In this charitable undertaking Jas
pei Grierson abetted his daughter as
the magnate of a small town NAV.
He built mansion at the lake-edge
and called it Mereside; and when it
was done gave a house-warming to
which the biddings were in a certain
sense mandatory, since by that time
he had fiduciary finger in nearly
every industrial pie in Wahaska.
After the house-warming, Margery
Grierson's leadership was tacitly ac-
knowledged, though the women still
discussed her with more or less
frankness in the sewing circles.
Crystallized into accusation, there
was little to be said against her, save
that she was pretty~and2 rich, and
that her leaning toward modernity
was sometimes trifle startling. But
the charitable seamstresses made the
most of these drawbacks, edging
them now and then with curious
speeNlations about Margery's mother,
whom neither Jasper Grierson nor
his daughter ever mentioned.
None the less, the big house by the
lake continued to set the social pace
Afternoon teas began to supersede
the sewing circles; not few of the
farmers wives attained to the for
NAL dignity of visiting cards with
wednesdays" or Thursdays" print
ed in neat script in the lower left
hand corner; and in some of the less
conservative households the principal
meal of the day drifted from it's
noontime anchorage to unwonted
moorings among the evening hours.
For these innovations Miss Grier-
son was responsible. She had ambi-
tions, but she was wise enough to
make the most of present opportuni-
| ties. 1t was better to be leader in
Wahaska than to be an humble fol-
lower in a great city; but she admit
ted this without prejudice to a fixed
| determination to revolve in the larger
orbit when the time should come.
She was content to wait, but she
aimed high. Unquestioned social rec.
ogmCion, won or compelled; that and
nothing else would atone for the OBJ
trusively unlovely past tholed in pri-
walton and squalor in the Colorado
mining camps. Miss Grierson was
barely %, but she had lived much.
But there were obstacles to be sur
mounted even in Wahaska. From the
first there was a perverse minority
which refused to bow the head in the
house of Rimmon. The Farnhams
were OF it, and the Raymers, with q
following of a few of the families
called old. as age is reckoned in the
newer west. They were loath to adj
NIT the omnipotence of Jasper Grier-
sons wealth, and at the housewarm-
ing the.r had been represented by va
riously worded regrets. Miss Margery
laughed defantly and set her white
teeth on a dauntless resolution to
reduce this inner citadel of conserva-
tism. Accordingly she opened the
campaign the next morning at the
breakfast table.
"Poppa, who is the treasurer Of ST.
John's?'' she asked.
The magnate did not know. and
! said so.
"But you ought to know" said Mar.