Evening star., 1915-03-28

But you will help We can't either of us spare
you, you see"
Maybe it was the jolyin speech, or maybe it was
the unexpected smack but inside of five minutes
Martha has shed her bonnet and we're all sittn'
around the table as friendly and jolly as you please
7 SUPPOSE it was by way Of maxim Martha feel
conf table and as if she really part of the game
that they got to reminscin about old times and the
folks they used to know. | want followin it very
close until Martha gets to askin Ballard about some
of his people, and he starts in this story about his
nephew.
"Poor Dick!' says he, pushin' back his dcmtasse
and ghtin' up big perfecto. "Now if he'd been my
boy, things might have turned out differently But
my respected brother-we, you knew Richard, Mar
tha. Not at all like eminently respectable bit
solemn, and tremendously stiff necked on OCCASION
The way he took about that red-headed Irish girl
for instance. Irene you know. Why, you might have
thought, to have heard him storm around, that she
veritable sorceress or something of the kind
when as matter of fact, she just nice, whole
some, keen-witted young woman. Pretty as picture
she was, and as true gold too-a lot too good for
young Dick Ballard, even if she merely girl in
his fathers office You couldn't blame her for liking
Dick, though. Everyone ddthe scatter-braned scamp
And when my brother went through all that melo-
dramatic folly of cutting him off with a thousand
year-well, we had our big row over that. That was
when took my money out of the firm. Lucky did
too. When the panic | was SAFE
Lets see" says Zenoba, "Dick and the girl ran OF
and were married. weren't tley?"
"Yes,' says Ballard. @It's in the blood, you see
They went to Paris to carry out of Dicks great
schemes He had persuaded some of his friends big
real estate Dealers to make him their foreign agent
His idea was, believe, to catch Western millonaes
abroad and sell EN- Fifth mansions Actually
did land one or two customers think. But his
wes notion that turned out to be really PRACTICAL
leasing French and Italian villas to rich Americans
Something in that, you know, and if Dick had only
stuck to it-but Dick could He got in with
some mine promoters, and after that nothing would
answer but that he must rush right back to Godied
and look over properties that for sale dirt
cheap. AS though Dick would have been any wiser
after he'd EN-! But his biggest piece of folly was
in taking the little boy along with him
"What! Away from his mother?" says Martha.
"Just like Dick says Ballard. "They couldn't both
leave the leasing business and she knew about
it than he dd-well, that's the way they settled it,
He persuaded her it would be fine thing for tie
youngster. Huh! l came the same boat with
them, and l want to tell you that little chap simply
owned the steamer! Bright? Why, he was the cutest
kid you saw-red headed, like his mother and
with his fathers laugh. Spent most of his time the
bridge with the first officer, down in the engine
with the chief. Dick never knew where
he half the time.
"He was for taking the boy out into
the mining country with him too. sup
posed he had until | got this frantic
cable from Irene. They sent her word