Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-12-22
THE EVENING STORY.
PIE.CRUST TABLE.
Copyright. 1913, BY W. Werner

Copyright. 1913, by W. werner)
Miss Sophronia Lee went to the corner
cupboard and from the topmost shelf took
down an old cracked blue sugar bowl,
lt was her private bank, and it held all
the money she had in the world.
MISS Sophronia carried it to table and
proceeded carefully to count it's contents.
me taxes were due again, and unless she
could pay them the house must be sold
for their satisfaction. OF this she had
been duly warned. She made a graceful.
pathetic Inquire as she sat counting her
pitiful little array of paper and silver
money insufficient for the purpose in
tended, and Miss Sophronia, realizing
this, grew blurred of sight and tremulous
of hand as she dropped over her little
board.
Miss Sophronia was sixty. She had
been very rose of a girl but now her
hair was like gray-hnlshed silver,
petal-like pink was enmeshed in the
wrinkles of her soft cheeks and her eyes
were wonderfully blue They were the
eyes OF young girl still as far as can
dor and ignorance went, for she never
had learned the ways of the world and
never would, though she lived for yet
another generation.
But she was entirely alone and most
saoiy so. In measure this was e
fault of her inheritance. She had been
pred an aristocrat, and all the wear and
tear OF life could not change her. And
Yet she was very gentle.
Then, too. there was the house. In it's
day 1t had been a mansion. 1t was of
wood, with quaint portal and dee ly
recessed windows. Two great pines did
sentinel duty before it. They had been
planted by Miss Sophronia's grandfather.
| The house had been surrounded by vast
| territory OF woods and fields. but as the
| fortunes of the family dwindled this land
Ia holT sold
ground left than was needed to grow a
| few hollyhocks under Miss Sophronia $
| windows. The house itself she would not
| sell. All her life she had lived in it. 1t
| myriads of departed footsteps, choruses
| of hushed voices, crowding visions of
| dead faces. Down the great staircase,
| with its hand-turned balustrade, she had
| f1oated in hoops and sarcenet, a radiant
young debutante, at her first great party.
! In the wide hall. empty now, but then
| aglow with freight and vast mahogany
| furnishings, her first lover had bowed
over her hand. So brief had been that
| exquisite courting-admittng of little
| more than glance. smile, a kiss-ahd
then he had been whrled away with flag
and bugle to his first battle, and his last.
Miss Sophronia was widowed before she
| was scarcely a sweetheart. Other men
came and went. She let them 60 There
was none like Nathan.
1t was pity that since she must go
OIL living yet nttle longer she did not
| have enough to live on. She wondered
| stupidity what she would do when the
house was sold.
| Miss Sophronia put the sugar bowl and
contents back into the empty cupboard.
| She was beginning to feel a little breath
| less and faint. She had eaten little that
| day; she did not care about anything; she
was tired and sick of the whole business
| of living, and her poor head felt very
| strange and bewildered.
She went back to her chair and
! down and leaned her head on one frail