Los Angeles herald., 1910-05-15


cord -ruche at the neck. There spots down the
front of her dress where acids had been spilled and
had taken out the color
How particular we are gettin',' she said, turning
the measuring glass round and round the towel
which had been wadded into it. 'You didn t use to
mind if 1 called you Pills just for fun. -
''Well, [ mind now. -
The girl took a clean towel from cupboard and
began to polish the showcases, breathing upon them
now and then. She good Hooking girl. She had
strong, handsome features, and heavy brown hair,
which she in a long braid down her back. A
deep red rose was tucked in the girdle of her cotton
gown, and its head olled to and fro as she worked
Her hands were prety shaped, but sensitive, and
the ends of the fingers were square.
'Well, Marella then, - said Mrs. Mansfield, still
looking amused; ~ gon to ask you if you knew
the Indians had all come in on their way home from
hop pickin ="
Mariella Strengthened up and looked at her mother.
Have they, honest, ma?''
eyes, they have; they'r all camped down on the
beach,
''Oh, wonder where'
''Why, the Nooksacks clear down at the coal
bunkers an the dummies close to Timberline's row;
an the Aaskas all on the other side the viaduc
care they goin to have the canoe race7''
eyes, guess so. l guess it III be about sundown
tonight There, you forgot to dust that milk shake.
An you ain It touched that shelf o. patent medi-
cines!''
She set down the last graduate and hung the damp
towel a nail Then she came out into the main
part of the store and sat down comfortably behind the
counter.
Long before Marella was born her rather mad
opened drug store in the tiny town of Sehome on
Puget sound. There a coal mine under the town.
A tunnel led down into it and the working among
the black diamonds with their families made up the
town. But there some trouble, and the mine was
abandoned and flooded with salt water. The went
away, and for many years Sehome was little more
than name. A mailboat wheezed up from Seattle
once a week, and two three storekeepers-Mr.
Mansfield among them-clung to the ragged edge of
hope and waited for the boom. Before it Mr..
Mansfield was bumped over the terrible road to the
graveyard and laid down among the stones and ferns
Then Mrs Mansfield run - the store. The question,
"Can you fill prescriptions2' often put to her
fearfuy by timid customers but she equal to the
occasion.
"Wen, l guess [ can, she would say, squarng
about and looking her questioner unwaveringy in the
eye. 81 guess I'd ought to. I've been in the store
with my husband that dead, for twenty years. I'm
not regular but IN practical-an' that's better
than regular any day.
''It's not so much what you know in a drug store
what you look like, you know she sometimes
fded to admiring friends
1t is true Mrs. Mansfield was often perplexed over
the peculiar curdled appearance of some mixture
being untaught in the mysterious ways of emulsons
a babe-but such trles were dismissed with a
philosophical sigh and the prescriptions handed
the counter with the compaisance that command
ed confidence. The doctor hinted, with extreme deli
cacy at times, that his emusons did not turn out
smooth he had expected, that it would be agree
able to find some of his aqueous mixtures tnged with
cochineal that it possible to make pills in
such way that they would not-so to speak-melt in
the patient s mouth before he could swallow them
But Mrs Mansfield invariably laughed at him in