The Press., 1907-11-06
Melinda's Knight.
Copyrighted, 1907, by c. H. sutclifre.
 
By cEcILY ALLEN

+ Copyrighted, 1907. by c. H. sutclifre' 2
 ! ! Melinda had come from up state
 Before her arrival in the big, bustline city she had studied stenography and | 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 a position and settled herself In a 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 H. brary system that made Melinda feel particularly elegant and independent and saved her 8 triweekly trip to the city library, a 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 a stern necessity in the ad- 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 blouses?
 It 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 tiat in a humble. twentieth century fashion this was rather 8 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.
 IT was wonderful play. called "The Road to Yesterday" and the natural climax of Melinda's course in novel reading. for in 1t a young girl and her lover and many other folk were trans ported back POO 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 O. the play and perhaps because dog days set>in Melinda read fewer novels and hunted methodically for her twen- tieth century knight. It 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 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 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 mill lions. clubfoot and bad taste in frocks, so he held no knightly possibil- ities. To be sure, there was the boy. who ran the elevator after p. m. He always held the car when he saw Me linda coming on those nights on which she worked overtime. But he was oNoANCAJ WEI hNC ACCk lAkCCs LID cheeks were a 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.
 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 d milk bottle without card A real knight, of course, would have a card or leave a glove or something of the sort
 Her search for 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