Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1904-05-05
mlhtIe 2Es
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E.HS4R GEW

LltIle MISS IlttletOn eyed with ap-
proval the two youthful figures hurry
ing up the village street. Eleanor,
her niece, reminded her so strongly of
that other Eleanor. She could almost
imagine that she was again in the old
southern homestead, and that this girl
was the sister whom she had loved so
we'll
The lad by her side also awoke ten
der memories, for he was very like
Col. Carter, when that doughty war
rior had come counting pretty Mary
Littleton full twenty years ago.
1t was the colonel who had given
her the nickname which had stuck to
her because of its appropriateness.
He had meant to give her yet an
other name, his own, but Mary Little
ton was true southerner, and she
could not forbear teasing northerner
even though she loved him-and in
fit of pettishness he had flung him
self out of the great wide hall one
afternoon and had written from the
hotel hurried note explaining that a
telegram was summoning him to his
mothers death bed.
He intended to come back, but there
had been an involved estate to settle,
and almost before he knew it a year
had slipped by and he had found at
| traction in a girl in his own native
town.
When he went back the Littletons
had gone north, he was told. Miss
Eleanor had married northern man,
and had taken her. sister with her.
1t has been quite by accident that
the younger Eleanor had met the son
of her aunt's old lover at the seaside
| the summer before. His mother was
dead, his father travelling abroad, and
he had accepted an invitation to spend
a holiday with the Merrimans, who
lived not half a mile from the little
cottage Miss Littleton made truly a
home for Eleanor.
They had been skating, and as the
pair came up the tiny walk, their
cheeks rosy and their eyes bright
from the exercise, little Miss Little
ton sighed and murmured a prayer
that this romance might not be like
that other one which lay shrouded in
her memory.
Eleanor came into the sitting room
to brush a kiss across her aunt's
cheek and pass loving hand over the
hair still brown and heavy. She made
hurried toilet before the sitting room
glass and hurried back to the parlor,
where the sound of their voices fioated
back, making music far sweeter to
Miss Littleton's ears than the half
audible notes of the piano, whose keys
Eleanor was lovingly touching.
The dusk grew deep in the sitting
room. the wood fire, Miss Littleton s
one extravaganza, Pickering in the alb,
surd little open crate so threw fan
tastic figures upon the wall patches of
light and shade that peopled the room
as with a merry crowd of dream PEG.
ple-companions perhaps, to those her
thoughts called back from the misty
memories of years gone by.
A change in the hum of converse
ton in the parlor brought Little Miss
Littleton back to the present. The
boys voice rose in injured protest
Eleanor's was cold with taunt. There
was a moment of pregnant silence, the
shutting of a door and MISS LlttletOn
was already at the doorway to receive
upon her shoulder the fearful face Of
the child in whom her hopes were
wrapped.
Slowly, patiently, she drew from
the sobbing figure the story of the
quarrel. 1t was all very childish; the
tale of a girlish assumption of do
minion, a boys assertion of man:
superiority OF independence. Mis-:
Littletons heart bled afresh as she
realized how very like her own wa:
this tale of sweetheart's quarrel, I'm
important except for the possibilitie:
for evil it might possess.
Then while the fire burned low Mis-
Littleton told of her own trouble tina
the girl might profit by her own bitteI