The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1907-10-26
MeIinda's
Knight.
.... By CECILY ALLEN.
80. By CECILY ALLEN.
Copyrighted, 1907, By C. II. Sutclife.

t:-:-:-:-.-.-.-.-..-..-..-.-.-
Melinda had come from up state.
Before her arrival in the big. busting
city she had studied stenography and
typewriting in an up state business
college. She was a good stelOgrapher-
too. and would have done we'll in the
city-if she had stuck to stenograpAic
Dot hooks and curlycues.
But Melinda would read novels. and
when she had secured a position and
settled herself in n hall room at the
working girls club the novel habit re-
asserted Itself more strongly than ever,
this perhaps because there was sec
ondhand bookstore jHst around the
corner. where she could buy novels
for 10 cents and exchange them for
different ones by paying just = cents
more. In fact il was circulating IL
brary system that made Melinda feel
particularly elegant and independent
and saved her a triweekly trip to the
city library. mile away.
Melinda did not care much for the
girls she met at the working girls
club. They talked shop and shirt
waists. and most of them worked in
factories at less salary than Melinda
received. She would not have remain
cd at the club only she had TO send
her widowed mother some money
every week. and the working girls
club was a stern necessity in the adj
justment of her finances Melinda was
also a little bored with conversation
about shirt waists, because she had
to make the ones she had brought
was the use of discussing bargain
counter styles in blouses?
1t was much more fun to read nov
els, particularly the sort of novels
most common at the secondhand book
shop, stories of English working laSsies
and chivalrous lords and dukes. who
abandoned scented drawing rooms aDd
red coated hunting fields to besiege
the hearts of the aforementioned honest
working lassies.
Just about the time that Melinda had
absorbed her three hundre and forty
ninth novel the bookkeeper gave her 4
couple of passes for the theater. 1t
was just his luck. he explained, that
the baby had the whooping cough
when those passes came his way. but
of course he wouldn't leave his wife
alone Of an evening under such cir
cumstances Melinda did not stop 20
consider that in a humble. twentieth
ILL
knightly thing for an underpaid book
keeper to do. but she took the theater
tickets gratefully and invited the as
sistant matron at the home to accom-
pany her to the theater
IL was a wonderful play. called "The
Road to Yesterday" and the natural
climax of Melinda's course in novel
reading. for in it young girl and her
lover and many other folk were trans
ported back 200 years and did all the
things Of which one reads in novels
centuries old. Its mOral-or one of
them-was that the old spirit of knight
hood lived In the twentieth century
man. though it sometimes had rather
a practical way Of manifesting itself.
From that night perhaps because ..
the play and perhaps because dog
days set in. Melinda read fewer novels
and hunted methodically for her TWEEN
tieth century knight. 1t was too hot
for her to light the gas in the small
hall room or even to burn a lamp,
and it was just right to sit on the
Stoop and watch passing figures that
might suddenly blossom out as knights.
So many Of the figures slOuched or
stopped that Melinda got a bit discorr-
aged and began TO look for them hy
daylight-in the big Office building
where she worked
But things had been going badly on
the market, and most of the men who
| held possibilities of knighthood hur-
ried past her with quick. nervous
strides. lowered heads and deep ringed
eyes. Her fellow workers in the Office
were all married. The junior partner
was engaged TO a girl who had mil
lions. a clubfOOt and bad taste in
frocks. so he held no kniShtly possibil-
tiles. To be sure. there was the boy
who ran the elevator after 6 p. N. BE
always held the car when he saw Me-
linda coming on those nights on which
she worked overtime. But he was
/ scarcely over five feet three. bis
cheeks We're a bucOIical pink in hue,
and his nose was frcckled. Besides. he
was paid 70 hold elevators and be
obliging to tenants who worked over
time, and mere knighthOOd on salary
was not worth mentioning.
Once or twice he had brought her
some garden flowers. the old fashioned
kind. mignOnette. heliotrope, phlox and
ragged robins, that his mother raised
in the garden OF their suburban home.
Melinda found them on her desk in a
milk bottle without a card. y real
knight, of course. would have card
or leave a glove or something Of the
sort
Her search for a knight was tagging,