The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-03-06
IN THE FIRE LIGHT.
By Margaret Lester.

4 f-opvriphted 1907 by Homer Sjrague.
 For a minute 1t seemed to him as if his beautiful plans were tumonns about his ears, just as the card house nf his childhood had fallen flat at the moment when victory perched on their gable ends. But as the boy had pa ftently rebuilt the card houses, so now Tom Graham resolutely set 10 rear anew his air castles of matrimonial happiness.
 s.Of course, Nellie, I'd rather you w,ouldn't work at all. No real man likes his wife to earn her living. but if you're set on staying at the tacto- ry a few months longer, why, let's gel married anyhow, and you and l can do the work together night ana liloi ing somehow, and take our olhherS a' the hotel on Sundays
 Not much" replied pretty Nellie Dinsmore, batting the carpet nervousiy with her beaded slipper. I'd De fright in no time, trying to work day and night. As soon as you get twenty a week, twice what I'm getting now I'm ready to give up my 1oo. After having ten week to spend just on .5 myself. there's no use talking about inc two of us living on S17.5o per. with taxes and insurance to pay ana the cottage needing painting. you really loved me, you'd sell the place. Tim Sullivan's just dying to buy II: Then we'd furnish up couple or rooms here in the hotel ana Iive ln style. Mrs. Conroy'd give us speclai rate"
 "Of fourteen week, leaving three fifty for clothes and incidentals-
 well. there's the money you get Tor the place" Graham's face turned stern and Nellie added hastily: "Or I'd stay at the factory until you got your raise and then maybe we could find another place. Anyhow, we'd be putting money in bank"
 Tom Graham bent over and took both the girls hands in his.
 Nellie, dear, I've some old fashioned ideas about marriage, and-you. don't want you to live in a hotel after we're married, with nothing to do but listen to the gossip of Mrs. Conroy and her sort. I want a home
 Nellie flung aside his hands angri-
 "oh, well, of course, if you want a home and not a wife-you might hire one of the Mccarthy sisters-they're past foty and won't make gossip-to keep house for you. But as Tor me, don't marry until see something be- sides dish washing in a shaboy COL tage before me-"
 Graham was very white now. In the days gone by they had played in that shabby cottage" oh, how happily! II had been Nellies refuge from an un- happy, fearful mother, who had first driven her husband to drink and then followed him to a premature grave.
 Something like an illuminative mes sage flashed through his being. If ht forced Nellie into a marriage that ap' come as dissatisfied and fearful as hi' come as dissatisfied and fearful as hei mother He rose abruptly. He coulc not picture Nellie in tears, but there were little lines about her mouth al this moment that he did not like. H' loved her, but he did not propose tC wreck two lives in futile attempt tt try out the love in a cottage plan Neither would he give up his tiny an cestraI home, sole legacy of his loving parents.
 Nellie had been happy there only { few months before, when she hat boarded with his widowed mother but when the latter died, Nellie hat taken up her quarters with a numbe of other girls from the shoe factory at a second-class hotel. Somehow Tom felt she had changed from tn day she stepped over the hotles thresh old, and he glared back at its bright ly lighted barroom and dimly lighte parlor. as he stood out in the middl of the street