Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-08-18

- to the public for what we did concerned only
ourselves and one other; but because the news
pn ds ao folks D Wb 90, know hns about
it went around telling the biggest fake yarns You
ever heard. 1t was enough to make fellow sick
To show how much the papers knew they kept
talking about our being mere children and referred
to the thing boy and girl romance, and all
that sort of piff stuff And moreover we didn't
did We weren't ashamed of Our ages. And we
weren't mere children either. Doris was nine.
teen, and l twenty-three. had been out OF
college year, and Doris coming out that tall.
And it wasn't anyones business, anyhow.
And all the piffie about my wanting to marry
her because her people had a lot OF money-why,
anyone that knows anything at all knows that
DOrSs father is dead and that she ism due to get
than five six hundred thousand from her
uncle. ust because she lived with the Spratt
Mosers people-outsiders, l 1nean-thought she
of the children; but she wasn't, she was
just the old gentlenan's niece; and all she's got
coming to her is just what her father. Cunnlns
Moser, left in trust with her mother. But if Doris
hadn't had cent it wouldn't have made any dit
ference, and III knock the of the fellow who
SAYS it would. And I'd have done it before this.
you can gamble on that! only a chap can lick
whole newspaper office. Well that's all right.
To begin at the beginning, like the fellows who
write the stories in the magazines YOU read on the
trains, Doris and | were brought up together.
When we were kids in New York we lived on oppo-
site sides of the street. That down town.
Things have changed heap down there now, and
Doris says they've turned our house into a German
restaurant. But when lived there, fourteen
met Doris-anyway, the first time remember Of
in the square, which just around the corner
from where lived. | rolling hoop, and so
Doris. We We're on the same side of the walk.
l told her she'd better get out of my way, and she
said I'd better get out of hers. Then our hoops
bumped each other, and grabbed hers and threw
it into the fountain. She got jolly mad and threw
her stick and just by luck of course it took
me the cheek. After that good friends.
We pretty OF age, You see and she
wasn't bit OF a sissy In those days she had terri
bly, red hair and lots OF treckleS.
guess | fell in love with her when | was sixteen
and she twelve; the first time, | meant used
to fall in love with her and get it every year
had girls picture on his chiffonnier and said he
engaged to her. | don believe he really was,
because the girl looked about twenty, and he was
only seventeen. But | sent to Doris for a picture,
and she had some taken specially. And they were
peaches. She sent the proofs. and chose tour
styles. The two she sent when they were done
were just different anything; YOU wouldn't
have known they were the same girl. So | called
of them Doris and the other Lucille and told
the fellows | was engaged to both of them.
And that went all right until Chump named Sud
Folsom took them both out of the mirror, where |
had them stuck, and looked at the backs of them
Doris had gone and written Pete from Doris,
with all her love" each one, and I'd forgotten
it. But the fellows were crazy about those pic
lures. Sud used to beg me to take him home to
visit at vacation And Doris getting to be a
fine locker about that time, tell you, OF course
she wasn't pretty as she is now; but she
getting her looks fast.
And the next spring l went hone-Id flunked
in math. and chem, and feeling bit down in
the mouth. She fairly took my breath away. It's
funny how girls change that way. You take them
home one night as homely as mud fences. and the
next afternoon You meet them and they Just simply
floor you. That was the way Doris did; sort of
blossomed out overnight And she awfully
sympathetic about the funking and all that and