Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-31

last night too. Keep pushin and shown and
push dem clouds away!' 1t means something
l know it does" She leaned out to look
The man in the street was walking slowly away
whstling as he walked: Keep pushin' and
shown"
"My!" sighed Mary isn't it romantic? lust
like the lights of London, something
Excuse me- said a voice so close in her ear
that she started violently, "aint you goin to
lose your comb"
Mary gazed with startled eyes at the face looking
out from the window next to her under the
roof. The faint starlight shone on eyes just now
alight with some sudden and determined purpose
They cleaned from young face with features
well cut, though there deep lines about the
smooth-shaven lips and certain sharpness about
the shining eyes that were little disconcerting-
they would have been so to more experienced
observation than Marys.
Mary saw nothing but young and, as he seemed
to her, handsome man who was looking straight
at her as if he wanted to know how long she had
been at the window and what she found there to
interest her.
"Oh," stammered the girl, ~ thank you'll"
and she looked out of her window no more that
night.
She lit her smoky lamp and began a letter to
Tom; but the light bad, the pen scratched,
and somehow the strange whistled signals rang
in her ears so distinctly that she could not keep
her mind on the letter
''' Push dem clouds away" crooned Mary.
Dear me, what can it all mean? Tom will have
to wait tonight"
In the morning when she ran down to get the
rolls for her breakfast she thought the door of
the room next to hers creaked as she slipped past
it, as if some one quietly watching her from
a crack in the hinge, and when she brewed her
solitary cup of tea that night she felt a strange
sense of companionship, as if some one in
terested in her comings and goings and her simple
doings generally.
When the hurryng street was quiet again she
took her station at the window.
4 don't care she said, as if answering some
unseen professor; mysteries were made to be
solved"
The sun sank in blaze that night and cast
red reflection across to the eastern heavens where
the great black clouds rolling up like some
somber pageantry of maj estic grief. The rising
wind smelled of the salt sea- and it sang gaiy about
the of the garnet where the girl sat- and did
its pry!ng best to take liberties with her shining
hair, though she sat well within the window to-
night, with the sense of being watched growing on
her the sulen day waned into a wild nightfal1.
Just the first flash of lightning tore the black
Clouds the whistle she listened for echoed from the
street
Jennie, my own true loved one, wait till the
clouds roll by" it sang, and as before came the
answer from the window next Mary's: Keep
a pushin' and shown and push dem clouds
away!"
We'll" said Mary under her breath, eff this
isn't"
sudden binding flash shvered the sultry air,
and she gave smothered shrek
Don't be scared" said voice from the next
window. Its long ways off," and again Mary
withdrew from her window, and again she was too
distracted to write to Tom.
This is real life" she said to herself as she
massaged her smooth young face Miss Beaure-
gard" had taught her to do. you could live all
your life in Oak Center and hear of such
a thing 1t is a regular romance What can it