Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1907-11-07
Melinda's
knight.
80. By CECILY ALLEN.
copyrighted, 1867, by G. Fl. sutcliffe.

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Melinda had come from up state.
Before her arrival in the big, busting
city she had studied slelography aud
typewriting in an up state business
college. She was Il good stenographer,
TOO. and would have done well i'll the
city-if she had stuck to stenographic
pot hooks and curlycues.
Rut Melinda would read novels. and
when she had secured position ami
settled herself in hall room at the
working girls club the novel habit re-
asserted itself more strongly than ever,
this perhaps because there was sec
midland bookstore just around the
corner where she could buy novels
for 10 cents and exchange them for
different ones by paying Just : cents
more. Ia fact. ii was circulating IL
brory system that made Melinda feel
norticularly elegant and independent
and saved her = 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
cd at the club only she had TO send
her widowed mother some money
every week. and the working girls
club was n stern necessity in the ad-
| instment of her finances. Melinda was
| also little bored with conversation
about shirt waists because she had
| 10 make the ones she had brought
| from home do her all season. So what
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 aud
red coNtnd hunting fields to besiege
the heats of the aforementioned honest
working lassies.
Just about the time that Melinda had
absorbed her three hundred nnd forty
ninth novel the bookkeeper gave her
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 TO
consider that in humble twentieth
century fashion this was rather 81
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.
/! was a wonderful play. called THE
! Road to Yesterday" and the natural
| climax of Melinda's course in novel
! reading, for in it a young girl and her
lover and many other folk were trans
ported back 2oo years aud did all the
things Of which one reads In novels
, centuries old It's moral-or one Of
! them-was that the old spirit of knight
hood lived In the twentieth century
man, though 1t sometimes had rather
q practical way of manifestlng 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 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 thar 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 knghthood 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 mil
Hons, clubfoot and bad taste in
frocKs, so he held no knightly possibil-
ltles. 10 be sure, there was the boy
who ran the elevator after 6 y. m He
| - '''N' i''ih VIC Ndl With lt SAW ME-
linda coming on those nights on which
she worked overtime. But he was
scarcely over five feet three, his
cheeks were n bucolical pink in hue,
ana his nose was freckled Besides, he
was paid to hold elevators and he
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, mignonelte, heliotrope, phlox and
| ragged robins. that his mother raised
III The garden of their suburban home.
! Melinda found them on her desk in
| milk bottle without a card A real
knight Of course, would have a card
or leave 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
| y IN midsummer when the assistant
ihatron, remembering the theater tick
! cts asked Melinda to make a trip
noNu the bay aud back one merclless-
" hot night Melinda assented Ian