The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1915-11-11
Cupid Of the Chair
BY HELEN ELLSWORTH WRIGHT.

BY HELEN ELLSWORTH WRIGHT.
| Copyright. Paget Newspaper Service.
In the kitchen, sunshine, fltering
through chinks of the mended shade,
dappled the auction refreshments
milk-pans Of sandwiches, covered by
dampened cloths-cups, ready for cot
fee. The dining room was over-full
with furniture, but the closed parlor
held only the M chair that was not
for sale. Before it knelt Myra Curtis
packing a smoking jacket and a pair
Of embroidered slippers into a little
box.
Outside, a cloth sign Haunted the
words Public Auction" across the
cattle shed. Tom Brannon, the auc-
tioneer, swung suddenly from the plat
form with the gavel in his hand and
made towards the house.
"Myra!" he called softly at the
kitchen door. There was no response
and he crossed the floor, purposely
Gathering a stool. In the dining-room
he waited, calling a second time. Pres
emily he strobe determinedly to the
parlor door. Are you in there?" he
demanded, drumming with his finger
tips On the panel.
She was silent.
Turning the knob, he stood awk-
wardly before her, his sensitive ford
| face tell-tale with emotion.
Myra sprang up, thrusting the pack
Ell behind her in an Intellectual effort
to conceal it with her skirts. One OF
the slippers fell at his feet.
Brannon picked it up and turned it
| over a time or two, his eyebrows arch.
ing.
WAS that your father's7" he gently
asked.
The blood surged to her forehead,
| then drained away. Fol a moment. She
was giddy and closed her eyes. She
had made those slippers for Tom in
the days when he used to bring her
home from choir practice, and he had
never known. When she opened her
eyes again, Brannon was wonderingly
drawing the jacket into view.
"And was that your father's?" he
persisted.
To the woman, 1t was as II he were
peeling the outer layers from her soul.
! That had been made before their quar-
| rel, when he used to come on Sundays
and sit in her chair. A terror seized
her lest he should divine it.
"Were those things your father's?"
She shook her head.
"Thcn whose were they?"
He had probed the quick of her sc.
eret. A Curtis, she had boosted, icy
er evaded, never deceived. For gener-
atoms, not a scion of the house had
lied. She grew suddenly defensive for
the girl who was herself-the girl
whose portion of owe had been so
small. What would he think II he
knew that often at night, in that mag
ic hour when the dew spills the scent
of the flowers, she came into this
front room and deliberately evolved
from her fancy his figure sitting in the
zig armed chair?
Aren't you going to tell me whose
they were?" There was insistent per
s~uasiveness in his voice.
Again she shook her head.
The sun, blazing against the yellow
ish linen shades, lent a peculiar glow
to the room; it Intensified the red
that surged to the roots of Brannon's
hair.
"Well," he conceded, they couldn't
have been a%nybody's but your faith
er's! Your mother wouldn't have worn
them"
His conclusion stung; 1t was Is
though he had twitted her with pow
erty. What right had he to infer that
she had never had a lover! An un-
comfortable something within her rose
to battle for her pride.
"They could have been somebody's
else!" she retorted. "They are some
ones else. They are-his!"
"His?' Brannon repeated, as II stu
peied.
All at once, to her overweight
fancy, she seemed standing in the
middle of her desert life. Behind. lay
Iu0 lIdll VI AcI COAOAAC0S yCoAoS W.
fore they reached to a gray horizon.
A rebellious humiliation possessed
her. She had shaved to hold the ranch;
she had lost it. Today, her home
would be sold; tomorrow, with her
trunk and her chair, she would cross
the tuleland to the town, branded
Failure" and without the aureola of a
romance. Romance wa a woman's
Inheritance! Out of her loneliness
rose a mastering impulse to claim one.
Eyes, his!" she cried, defiantly.
"They belong to the man who cares!"
The words out, she longed to retract
them. Her father use to say a lie was
the passport to damnatiOn. She had
told one!
1t was very still in the room; the
hush jeered her. Her heart was
pounding in her ears.
"There's a man who cares!" she
steadfastly asserted. HE comes every
night. He sits in that chair. That's
why it is not for sale!" She stopped,