Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1916-05-11

OF cohlieIls1Ie-O-l5 I'M 80 ----1-C1 ~-5r
mother or. somebody had the temerity
10 label Amy, sweetest and most
seraphic of diminutives.'
If you don't like my name" she
began, and then she went of at an
other tangent. Please tell me why I
am collection of contradictions
Brouillard's gaze went past the
shapely little figure in the string ham
mock to lose itself in the far Timan-
yoni distances.
You are bundle of surprises, he
said, letting the musing thought slip
into speech. What can you possibly
know about my thoughts?"
She made a funny little grimace at
him. 1T was contradictions a mo-
ment ago and now it is surprises.
Which reminds me, you haven't told
me why | am collection"
"Oh, l can catalogue them if you
push me to it. One minute you are
the Madonna lady that l can't recall
calm, reposeful, truthful, and all that,
you know-so truthful that those child
like eyes Of yours would make a slut
tering imbeci1e Of the man who should
come to you with lie in his mouth"
And the next minute?" she prompt
ed.
The next minute you are witch,
laughing at the mans little weak
nesses, putting your finger on them as
accurately as if you could read his
soul, holding them up to your ridieule
and-what's much worse-to his own.
At such times your insight, or what
ever you choose to call it, is enough
to give man fit OF seeing things
Her laugh was like a schoolgirls,
light-hearted, ringing, deliciously unre-
strained
What a pictured" she commented.
And then: Il can draw a better one
of you, Monsieur Victor de Brouil-
lard"
do it," he dared
Very we'll, then: Once upon time
it was a good while ago, I'm afraid
you were a very upright young man.
You would cheerfully have died for a
principle in those days, and you would
have allowed the enemy to cut you up
into cunning little inch cubes before
you would have admitted that any pig
con was ever made to be plucked."
He was smiling mirthlessly, with the
black mustaches taking the sardonic
upcurve.
Then what happened?"
"One Of two things, or maybe both
Of them. You were pushed out into
the life race with some sort of a
handicap. I don't know what it was
or is. Is that true?"
He nodded grave1y. ct is all true
enough. You haven't added anything
more than a graceful little touch here
and there. Who has been telling you
all these things about me? Not
Grizzy?"
mo, not Murray Grislow; it was the
man you think you know best in all
the worldwide is also probably the
one you know the least-yourself."
Good heavens! Am really such a
transparent egoist as all that?"
All men are egoists," she answered
| calmly. ''In some the ego is sound
and clear-eyed and strong; in others
it Is weak-in the same way that pas
sion is weak; it will sacrifice all it has
Or hopes to have in some sudden fury
of self-assertion."
She sat up and put her hands to her
hair, and he was free to look away,
! down upon the great ditch where the
endless chain of concrete buckets
added to the deep and widespread
| foundations of the dam. Across the
river group Of hidden sawmil1s sang
| their raucous song. In the middle dis
| lance the camp-town city spread
| it's roughly indicated streets over the
valley level, the tall chimney stacks
Of the new cement plant were rising,
and from the quarries beyond the
plant the dull thunder Of the blasts
| drifted up.
This was not BrOuilIard's first visit
| to the cabin on the Massingale claim
| by many. In the earliest stages Of the
valley activities Smith, the Buckskin
| cattleman, had been Amy Massingale's
escort to the reclamation camp-"just
a couple O. lockers" in Smiths phrase
and the unconventional attitudes
| had done the rest. From that day for
ward the young woman had Hospitality
| opened her door to 6rouillard and his
assistants, and any member Of the
| corps, from Leshington the morose,
| who commonly came to sit in solemn
silence on the porch step, to Griffith,
who had lost his youthful heart to
Miss Massingale on his first visit, was
welcome.
| T1E rIIApTrn VII ETNl