The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-07-21
A srrn1,lrR AFFAIR

A SUMMER AFFAIR
 Anybody with sense might have known what would happen. If you put two attractive girls in one summer cot tage across the lake and after a couple of weeks of Adamless existence except for the small boys and the middle-aged land owner who spent his summers there with his famiIy-you suddenly brought two eligible young men as guests at the next cottage you might be pretty sure those girls would not spend their time reading novels. For. of course, the young men would begin by wondering what to do to amuse themselves.
 There is no doubt that Hardness and Phelps had a good time that weekend and maneuvered shamelessly to get asked over the next Friday. Being en- gazing youths. their hostess was glad 10 have them come again. There is nothing that so adds to woman's popu- larity at a summer resort as controlling the visible supply of young men. So
 Mrs. Smith knew very well why it was that the Jones girls suddenly showered her with magazines. came over to be taught embroidery stitches and asked
 her to go sailing. She repaid them by giving Hardness and Phelps a stand
 ing invitation to come whenever they could
 By the time their vacation periods ar
 rived and they stayed three weeks they
 were decidedly good friends of the
 Jones girls. The other young women
 at the resort who had avrried later were outclassed and had to put up with
 the schoolboys. The middle-aged land owner was unavailable, because his wife was argus eyed and his children clung to him like barnacles. The Jones girls paraded their captiyes heartlessly
 before the rest of the young women and safely, because they were the pret-
 tiest, brightest girls there. The others
 gnashed their teeth, fguratiyely speak ling. What they really did was to toss their heads and pretend they preferred
 shoolboys.
 The Jones girls were having a beau tiful time and every one at the resort was calculating how Hardness and Phelps were going to decide which each preferred, The other girls said of course the poor men had no chance to escape with such barefaced attack on their hearts in progress and wondered how they stood it. The schoolboys, in lspite of their popularity with the ma ljority, after masculine custom, sighed lyearningly for the minority, who snubbed them and went sailing, dan Icing and fishing with Hardness and Phelps. The mothers of the outclassed majority did fancy work on the plazzas land confided to one another their dis Iapproval of the giddiness of the Jones girls. The whole place was expectantly waiting the announcement of the dou- | ble engagement.
 Then Dorothy arrived. Dorothy was leverything that her name implied. She lwas twenty, rose-faced, dewey-eyed, Igarbed in delightful fluffy things and as picturesque as the veriest stage in- lgenue She had way of looking wide- l eyed Into the face of any one talking to
 her that was calculated. if one was of 1.-the masculine persuasion, to give his
 heart an attack of somersaults. Hark- ness and Phelps developed a fondness for this form of cardiac gymnastics. Of course it was gradual is,
 three days is gradual for a summer re- b sort. But in that time the fact was made clear that the two available young men had changed allegiance and were the devoted slaves of Dorothy, in. the third cottage but one. Of course lthe Jones girls were not dropped
 Hardness and Phelps were above that but they were now merely included.
 The Jones girls at first, noticing their
 slaves fascination, had had the idea that they were including Dorothy as a clever flank movement: but they soon
 realized that it was the other way.
 They smiled on Dorothy sweetly, after lthe fashion of thoroughbreds, but they knew when the axe fell.
 The other girls and their mothers
 said it served the Jones girls right and
 began rubbing it in by asking them to
 go on expeditions where the schoolboys