The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1907-10-22
Melinda's
knight.
-. By CECLY ALLEN.
Copyrighted. 1907, by G. q. sutcliffe.

typewriting in an up state business
college. She was good stenographer,
too, and would have done well in the
city-if she had stuck to stenographic
pot hooks and curlycues.
But Melinda would read novels, and
when she had secured position and
settled herself In q hall room at the
working girls club the novel habit re-
asserted itself more strongly than ever,
this perhaps because there was a sec
ondhand bookstore just around the
corner, where she could buy novels
for 10 cents and exchange them for
different ones by paying just 2 cents
more. In fact, 1t 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
ed at the club only she had to send
her widowed mother some money
every week, and the working girls
club was 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
from home do her all season. So what
was the use of discussing bargain
counter styles in blouses7
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 and
red coated hunting fields to besiege
the hearts of the aforementioned honest
working lassies.
Just about the time that Melinda had
absorbed her three hundred and forty
ninth novel the bookkeeper gave her a
couple of passes for the theater It
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 to
consider that In a humble, twentieth
century fashion this was rather a
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
1t 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 1t sometimes had rather
a practical way Of manifesting itself.
From that night. perhaps because OF
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 1t 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 bit discour-
aged and began to look for them by
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 girl who had mn
lions, clubfoot and bad taste IN
frocks, so he held no knightly POSSIBLE
tiles. To be sure, there was the boy
who ran the elevator after 6 p. m. He
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 were bucolical pink in hue,
and his nose was freckled. Besides, he
was paid to hold elevators and be
obliging to tenants who worked over
time, and mere knighthood on salary
was not worth mentioning.
npo. %xr11o h. hoE Awo,,~t,+
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. A real
knight, Of course, would have a card
or leave a glove or something of the
sort
Her search for a knight was tagging,
partly because Of the heat and partly
because the hot, overworked men
around her looked anything but knight
ly In midsummer, when the assistant
matron, remembering the theater tick
cts, asked Melinda to make a trip
down the bay and back one merciless-
ly hot night Melinda assented Ian
guidly, and the assistant matron felt
her heart stirred by strange pity for
this tired little up state girl, who
sometimes, amid all the artifciality
and sordidness Of her city life, man
aged to hold on to her old Ideals She
was so different from the other. in
mates of the Cuba bit silly about
novels and music and flowers, but still
SO shy and sweet
1t was great night on the bay,
moonlit and sparkling, after a day Of
relentless heat and humidity, and not
q night for disaster at all. But one
overlook them-a fiery sheet Of fame
beside which the SUMS rays of the day
Just closed were merciful. Melinda
heard just one long, hoarse cry, saw
one great flash of light, felt an arm
jerk her to her feet, and then every
thing was blank. This may have been
because the day had been so long and
hard or because the girl had never In
all her reading days thought Of what
one ought to do when fire broke out on
a crowded boat.
Something cool and lovely was trio
king on her forehead. her eyes, her
cheeks, her lips. She was floating on
a cloud. No, she was lying on wet
sand, and the assistant matron was
murmuring:
mo, no, she's not hurt. 1t was just
the shock. She will be all right In
minute. But you, you wonderful,
wonderful boy, to save us both"
Oh, yes, the fire, the trampling feet,
the brief glimpse into the great beyond
she remembered 1t all now. And
some one had saved them. There was
real knight in New York after all.
She wanted IN 0nQn her eyes and see