Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1906-08-18
At LAST.

Barbara w aflnS Adu prdCtlCaHS
learned and mastered the difficult art of
being poor when Fate presented her
whimsicallv with abundance. Every
body, even she, felt it to be more or
less a fantastic happening.
She wondered at first what she was
going to do with it all; that was before
She had learned that, along with for
tune. Fate always bestows methods for
| its dsposa--sudden and unknown acts
of duty, family claims that had only
been sleeping dogs until their opportun-
| ity awoke them to bark. She found
out also that Il great Geal of money may
| be expended upon the getting of simple
| things, if such happen, moreover not to
be the simple things Tor which Others
ask.
With a sort of gasping relief she ran
off to the sea. to a household OF merry,
| aifectionate, noisy creatures she had
once schooed and loved. They made
much Of her in their own breezy fashion,
quite unaffected by her change OF cir
cumstances except that it gave such an
unfailng excuse for teasing.
She was discovering among them that
the girl in herself was not so much
crushed and dead as neglected. She
kept cropping up and asserting herself
in the most unlooked-for daily fashion.
You are getting prettier and younger
every day. Mother Bah" one of the
girls exclaimed, watching a little excite
ment ruffie the quietness of her gray
eyes and flush her smooth cheek. Isn't
she, isn't she, EdwardT the girl cried
merrily. The mans watching eyes had
sudden spark of something new and
strange. Barbara drew a blind of blank
! forbididng over the youth in her own.
Her cheeks famed, not with the blush
of mere reproof, but something tiercer
The man saw it, and began to talk in
stantly with much detail of something
else. She thanked him for it secretly,
but with that barb implanted by the
careless schoolgirl hand ranking.
1t was so long that a man had looked
at her with that flash in his eyes, the
brief admiration of the moment, as she
called it to herself She thought she
could meet it calmly enough now, yet
the old savage thrOb had leaped III re-
Spouse TO that look.
When she was 20 she met a man OBJ
viously attracted by herself, not by any
of her attrbutes-music, deftness, or
mental quickness of perception-but by
herself. For the first time her wishes
were anticipated, her lightest words re-
membered and quoted, her tastes
studied in that old and sure fashion
never to be set aside or improved upon,
in the primitive pleasure of a wooer.
She opened out like a flower to the sun,
until the blow fell. He was not in earn
est; it was summers amusement, no
more! The realization came crashing
across her life, destroying not alone her
hope but some faith in herself. What
really mattered was not so much the
loss of a lover as the loss of her self.
She emerged from the silent conflict
altered only to herself. She had killed
that part of her nature, she told herself
somewhat grandiosely. and certainly the
corpse had shown no sign of life until
this afternoon, when girls nonsense
drew that flash from a mans eye and
that instructive, cruel response from her
self
| Edward Banks was an elder son of
the house by another marriage. He was
removed by age and a certain difference
| not SO much age as n change of mental
outlook from the merry. pleasure-loving
thronG of half-brothcrs and sisters,
whom he secretly protected from them
selves mt eVcs'y turn. There was nothing
superior in his attitude. odd Ted" was
loked up to laughingly. vet with much
earnestneSs underneath the fun. as min
Cling in himself the joint roles of an
autocrat and Il most susceptible Chancel-
lor of eXchequer He was inevitably the
arbiter of family destinies in his quiet
conclusive way of decision.
barbara stepped into the family atti-
tude straightway. Oddly enough. al
though her years and his own tailed
she regarded him much as his young sis
tcrs did, to his own amusement Mt FIRST
Lately a vague doubt crept in. Ii was
, never expressly defined. not even when
J his flashing eyes set her pulses dancing
on the summer afternoon when they SAT
looking ut the blue waters of the hov no,
a Isl 4.