The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-06-10
-:- OUR DAILY SHORT STORY -:-

out the tea The other looked round her inquiringly.
 "Milk?'
 'No. there isn't an today. I could not climb up and down those stairs again. I'm sorry. Lila; but life Is full of disapointments."
 oh it doesn't matter" She slipped the tea. and her eyes. too. sought the blue outside. What a perfect day this would be in the countryi Can't you imagine it7 June roses grow in June, believe-real ones. I mean not things you buy out of a basket for ponny. They grow on dear old walls. and starggling flower beds. and you smell them when you look out of your window in the morning. You go out after breakfast in a large hat and pair of old gloves, and snip them off and stick them in China bowls. am beginning to think that must have dreamed all that"
 T have had dreams, too. but they are misty now. They were not alto gether pleasant. Tn fact their general tone was one of fleeing before butch CTS. and rendering scornful grocers peace. e.offefings on account. Likewise the turning of last summers dress. so as to look tidy to go to church. Now don't go to church. and I haven't the time to turn my dresses. The weeks come and the weeks go. and spend them--here." She looked round the room. Iilla. what do you suppose we shall do when we are old?'
 Die, of course!"
 ''Oh, no; people never die when they want to. They go on living, and then agonize out at some very inconvenient time. You can't die to order--unless---"
 Don't Yes, I suppose that Is so. It must be. or should have died two years ago"
 T mean when Alec's letters stopped, and father died. and everything went wrong all at once. have an idea I prayed to die then. and being young and foolish really expected a little pri- vate pestiIence to be furnished on my behalf"
 The girl in black replenished her friends teacup and drained the pot into her own. Then she said:
 Your experience is wider than mine. You have had the privilege of loving and being loved. Now, that never came to me. for was born to this life like a thousand other girls around us. We go straight from school to office, and If we have romances they are connected with a pasty-faced youth behind a counter, or worse, far worse than that with one of MT. Simeon's kind. Per- sonally, I never was in love. and don't know the feeling. Moreover. I know hundreds who have no more of love than I though they are not honest enough to say so. Yours is a gen uine case; and in the state of life into which we have been been called it Is certainly an exception"
 T thought love was the rule in life" ls..J,,
 Not for the superfluous woman. She is better without what Is foisted upon her for the article. She has so little chance of the real. An, Lilla,. I envy you your generous heart. my dear and your brave lover! It must be something to feel that there are nobler passions in life than hunger and jealousy and hate"
 That is an extravagant way of put ting 1t; but 1t is something--no, 1t Is everything. It is the one thing that is pure and unselfish, the one thing that we give away freely. and are glad when 1t costs us much. Mildred, I have it in my heart today to be glad in spite of these two years of hope lessness in spite of the ache that never leaves me, and the sick longing for sight and touch---to be glad that loved my boy. When his letters stop ped and they said the ship was lost. I thought I knew all the bitterness of life. But there Is worse than that. l tempered by the thought that we loved each other. Alive or dead. we love each other still.
 The girl in black had flushed, and she did not move for a minute or two. The other gathered the tea things to- rether and began to tuck biscuit tin and kettle away in their dusty cor
 "Heigh- ho" she said. We both have to fight. Let us thank God we can see the humor of 1t. To me, now, there is something very quaint in your tea-naking I did not like to say so at the time but on another occasion if might be as well to remember that the sugar goes into the cups, and not in the teapot.
 q was thinking too hard of things in general, I suppose--a trick of mine. And indeed. I know 1t. for I have forgotten to tell you that there is a 1sfter for you on the mantelpiece. It came in just as I was starting out to Snuffy's.
 Lila turned to the mantelpiece, and the girl in black opened her notebook and ran a pencil up and down the lines of short-hand, reading 1t to her- self in an undertone. An exclama- lion made her look up. Her friend had turned round to her and was l standing with her head thrown back,