Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1909-11-19

Phil pressed against her side busy
with the snap of the shabby little purse
containing all the worldly wealth of the
small household.
Tets get a pencil and draw houses
for the sovereigns, where they've all got
to 60, like you did once before Make a
story, and tell how we viii spend the
one that is to take US TO the sea-" he
said, putting the five yellow discs in q
row on the faded little cloth.
Yes, yes! Tell, tell" cried Gerry in
her eager voice.
So AnLe took pencil and spare
page of an old account book and began.
She drew q shoemaker's house, where
one sovereign had to go to buy new
boots and shoes for all three of them,
and to pay for patching the old ones into
the bargain; and a grocer's and a dairy
house, where another was due to pay for
the small necessaries of daily food; then
there was the sovereign for the rent to
be handed over to the mixer of the
Gregory's powder down below, and when
all items had been reekoned there re-
manned thirty whole shillings to be put
into the seaside cottage that haunted all
their dreams day and night-a tiny
palings, and a rose bush over the porch
cottage divided from the beach by only
narrow strip of turf-a cottage that
smelled of sand and shells.
Write, Tt smells of fish, over the pic
ture, Mani" cried Gerry.
Whilst the solemn conclave was in
progress barrel organ commenced to
drone popular coon song under the
sitting room window
THE chap plays that all wrongl /
say, can't you hear you're leaving out all
the flats and sharps!" shouted Mr. Philip
Oliver, putting his curly, dark head ont
of the window to demonstrate with the
musician, then withdrawing it and clos
ing the sash with sharp bang
THAT chap can't do Honey half as
well as Gerry and me, Anne. Just you
listen minute"
The boy snatched up an old fiddle
which was lying face downwards on the
end OF the slippery sofa, and drew his
bow across the strings, the little girl
| placing herself beside him with her ban
| Jo Nothing could have been more spirit
ed or tasteful than the children's render
ing OF popular plantation song. Music
was In them both-a natural instinct in
herited from a dead mother whose pas
sionate love for the art had induced her
to leave home and friends to follow the
fortunes Of the young Italian music mas
ter who had taught the violin at the
| fashionable boarding school where Miss
Annabel Ferrars was being finished"
regardless of expense.
| Anne herself, the eldest child, was full
rf To hor :. I.
| poverty had rendered it impossible to
fully cultivate the invaluable gift. and
her whole childhood and earliest girl
| hood had been spent in the endless
drudgery of nursing an invalid mother,
dependent solely on the money earned ia
teaching by her penniless husband.
| Affairs had come to a climax after
Geraldines birth, when the Signora
Olivera, her name long since corrupted
into Mrs. Oliver by the class amongst
which she lived. ,'os.d her tear washed
eyes for ever on AN unkind world while
within six months of her death her hus-
band was knocked down by a van in
| Piccadilly Circus on his way home from
| playing at some charity concert, and
killed on the spot, thus leaving his three
children destitute
Fortunately, the promoters of the
smart society function at which poor
Olivera had been assisting when death
overlook him on his homeward road,
pleaded very warmly the cause of the
young creatures left orphans by their
| fathers untfmelY death, and a subscrip-
ton was raised sufficiently ample to
supply Anne and her little brother and
sister with all present needs. besides
forming a nest-egg, which, judiciously
invested, produced tiny sum of twelve
pounds year to count upon.
Charity once reused to action would
have gone further. Somebody unearthed
the all-important, but hitherto neglected,
fact that Olivera was himself of gentle
birth-had even been entitled to the
rank of count in his own coultry-and
sundry offers of homes in charitable in
stitutions for his two young children
in some cases of adoption by childiess
wealthy people-poured into little .Anne's
lap as she sat, very pale and forlorn, in
the shabby lodgings over the chemists
shop in those long, sad days after both
her parents had been taken from her
! There was, however, a vein of study,
truly British independence running
through the girls character that shrank
from accepting help either for herself or
these dear TO her, and the mere notion
of separation from Phil and Gerry. the
2-year-old baby, reused her whole heart
in revolt. Surely there had been part
ings enough already!
Whatever happened, the three that
were left must stay together.
TO BE CONTINUED