Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1912-01-13

AIRY ID, 1912.
able chaps to have round. They are ca.
PRECIOUS, irritable, temperamental,
selfish, and usually demand all the at
tention." a5
| The little vocal stream dried up
again, and once more they listened to
the magic sounds of the night. She
stopped abruptly to look over the para
pet, and his shoulder met hers; after
that the world to him was never going
to be the same again. Nj
Moonlight and poetry; not the SAT-
est channels to sail uncharted. The
girl was lonely, and George was lonely
too. His longing had now assumed a
definite form: hers moved from this to
that, still indefinitely. The quickness
with which this definition had come to
George rather startled him. His first
! sight Of Fortune Chedsoye had been
but yesterday; yet, here he was, not
desperately but consciously in love
with her. The situation bore against
all precepts; 1t ripped up his precon-
| ceived ideas Of romance as gale at
sea shreds a canvas He felt a bit pan
| icky. He had always planned court
ship of year or SO, meetings, separa-
lions, and remeetings, pleasurable ex-
pectations, little junkets to theaters
and country places; in brief, to wit
ness the rose grow and unfold. Some
where he had read or heard that court
ship was the plummet which sounded
the depths of compatibility. He knew
nothing of Fortune Chedsoye, save
; that she was beautiful to his eyes, and
that she was as different from the
ordinary run of girls as yonder moon
from the stars. Here his knowledge
ended. But instinct went on, apprais-
ing and delving and winnowing, and
instinct told him what knowledge
could not, that she was all his heart
desired. -
When man finally decides that he
is in love, his troubles begin, the
imaginary ones Is he worthy? Can he
always provide for her? Is 1t possible
for such marvellous creature to love
an insignificant chap like himself?
And that worst of mental poisons, Is
she in love with any one else? What
to do to win her? The feats Of Her
cules, Of Perseus, of Jason: what mad
piece of heroism can he lay his hand
to that he may wake the slumbering
fires, and having reused them, con.
tinue to feed them? -H .|
| Manhood, meaning that decade be-
tween thirty and forty, looks upon this
phase. abashed. After all, 1t wasn't 80
terrible; there were vaster emotions,
vaster achievements in life to which
in comparison love was as a candle
held to the sun.
Again she stopped, leaning over the
parapet and staring down at the
water swirling past the stone embank-
ment. He did likewise, resting upon
his folded arms. Suddenly his tongue
became alive: and quietly, without
hesitancy or embarrassment, he began
to tell her Of his school life, his life at
home. And the manner In which he
spoke of his mother warmed her; and
she was strangely and wonderingly at.
tractdd. r
"Of course, the mother meant the
best in the world when she gave me
Percival Algernon; and because she
meant the best, have rarely tried to
hide them. What was good enough for
her to give was good enough for me to
keep. It is simply that I have been
foolish about it, .supersensative. ]
should have laughed and accepted the
thing as a joke: instead, I made the
fatal move Of trying to run away and
hide. But, taking the name in full y
lightly at sounds as incongruous as
playing Traume rei on steam-piano."
He expected her to laugh but her
heart was too full of the old ache.
This young man, kindly, gentle, in.
telligent, If shy, was a love-child And
she? An offspring, the loneliest of the
lonely, the child that wasn't wanted.
Many time she had thought of fling,
ing all to the winds. Of running away
and hiding where they never should
find her of working with her own
hands for her bread and butter. Little
they'd have cared. But always the
rebel spirit died within her as she
stepped outside the villa gates. To
leave behind for unknown privations
certain assured comforts, things OF
which she was fond things to which
she was used, she couldn't do it. she
just couldn't. Morally and physically
she was a little coward.
| LET us 20 in" she said sharply. An.
other moment, and she would have
been in tears. -.....tt
CHAPTER VII. g..
During this time Mrs. Chedsoye, the
Major, Messrs. Ryanne and Wallace,
officers and directors in the United
Romance and Adventure Co., Ltd, sat
| in the Majors room, round the boudoir
stand which had temporarily been
given the dignity of table The scene
would not have been without interest
either to the speculative physiogno.
mist or to the dramatist. To each it
would have represented one of those
astonishing moments when the soul OF
person comes out into the open, as
one might express it. incautiously, to
be revealed in the expressions Of the
eyes and the mouth. These four per-
sons were about going forward upon
singularly desperate and unusual
enterprise. From now on they were no
longer to fence with one another, to
| shift from this topic to that, with the
indirect maneuvers of house-cat in
/ tent upon the quest of the Friday
mackeral The woman's face was alive
with ga gerness the oldest man looked