The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-09-16
EVENING STORY
~Pr0 Patria."
BY JANE OSBORN.

BY JANE OSBORN.
1t was q good half-hour after the
last of the evening "office hours"
neatly painted on the frosted glass
sign that was affixed to DR.. Burton's
front door, and so usually monotonous
were his evenings spent IN the nttle
neighborhood of Germantown that ne
experienced no little surprise when he
heard a ring OF his front door bell.
He had the evening paper in one hand,
his carpet slippers on his feet and his
shell-rimmed spectacles hanging
perilousIy over one ear when he went
to the door. 1t was his neighbor. Miss
Margaret Kellogg-Margaret kellogg,
noted in the neighborhood none the
less for her success as teacher OF the /
sinfant class in the one church OF the
neighborhood than for her dress
making establishment that consisted OF
one very young sewing apprentice. a
long pier glass in her front parior, q
half-dozen wel1-thumbed and not too
recent dressmakers' journals with |
signs, and enough orders for dresses
quite different from those portrayed
therein-from the women IN the
neighborhood to secure for Margaret a |
very meager income. She was not yet
thirty, but her many years OF self-re- |
lance and self-support led people to
think of her as considerably older.
1--WE been given the street to can
vass for the new liberty loan" she an |
nounced, when she had taken q seat
rather primly in the doctors cluttered |
study. '.I don't like prying into peo-
pies affairs, but 1t seemed that some
body had to do 1t, and when they
asked me didn't see my way clear to
refuse. Are you thinking OF taking
out one of the new bonds. doctor?
1t was an embarrassing moment un-
til the DOCTOR assured by the level
frank. blue eyes of the girl seated be-
fore him, decided to tell her just how
matters stood. He had been banker
ing to make a breast Of the situation
to some one and now he had an ex-
cuse. After all. if he had canvassed
the entire neighborhood OF Farnam-
town for a sympathetic soul to whom
he could with least embarrassment tell
his predicament 1t would have been to
this very Margaret Kellogg.
IT would like to subscribe as mich
as any one in town." he said, but I'll
tell you how it is. I've been here
let me see-three years. When my
uncle, old Doctor Murray, died I felt
that there was as good an opening
here as anywhere else, and I han
kered after the life of q country doc
tor. I found considerable mortgage
on this old place of his and I've had
to keep paying off that. Then his
equipment was entirely out of date,
and here. way off from hospitals I
to have. And. well, you know that
Germantown isn't very prompt in pay
ing its bills, and since the war a good
many people have left here to be
nearer the ammunition works and the
practice isn't SO large as it was TO
begin with. So, you see, Miss Mar
garet. I'd like to do 1t. but can't. I
can't even promise to take a single
bond, not this trip. I'd give up the
place here entirely, only somehow 1t
seems that the people need me. 1
may be called to the front, but SO far
1t hasn't seemed possible. I'm put
ting Ted thru college. and there's my
mother. who is staying to keep house
for him till he's thru I didn't like
to get exemption, but had to, and
now unless I'm called as a surgeon
I'll have to stick it out here"
Margaret had listened attentively.
She was aware of the fact, for every
one in Germantown knew his neigh
boris business. that>when the. doctor
undertook to subscribe to two bonds
on the previous issue he had dispensed
with the services OF his one man of
all work, and since that time he had
been running his own small car and
no doubt cooking his own meals.
cleaning his own house and hoeing
his own garden. She knew also that
Germantown was SLOW pay" and she
knew that people had especially i'm
posed on the young doctor. who, be-
cause he had bought new equipment
for his office and went about in an
utomobile-howbeit the least pre-
| tentious- of its tribe-instead of. in the
old doctors buggy, they imagined to
be possessed of untold wealth. Hence,
payments were deferred more than
| ever and, tho they would have ex-
pected the butcher or baker to sus-
pend service had they kept him wait
| iy7er for At he
| tor. they would have been nightly Of
Tended if the doctor did not rouse
himself from slumber to sooth their
aches ana pains in spite of bills gone
overdue for two or three years.
| So after Margaret kellogg Lad
stayed just long enough, as she told
| herself, to indicate that she wasn't
unified because he didn't subscribe"
| she went on to her next neighbor and
SO back to her little cottage down the
street.
| 1t was two months later. 1t was 8
o'clock. just after the last of the doc
tors office hours, and lamp burned
| in Miss Kellogg's front parlor. where
| she was picking out long seams on
| dress she had put together for the
i minister's wife who had decided, af-
| ter it was almost done, that she wanted
it made in quite another way from the
1 original plan. And picking out was
| difficult on the double stitch machine
| There were so many changes of mind
1 among the feminine population of
/ Germantown who patronlzed Miss
| Kellogg that when she cashed in her
| old machine few years before and
got a new one she had threatened to
get a single threader," but loud had
been the objections. Her patrons
didn't want to run the risk of having
seams come updone in church or at
sociables, as they had heard of their
doing when sewed in that careless
manner.
The doctor had never called on Mar
saret before except professionally once
or twice, and this was not exactly a
social CALL He had been designated by
| the local authorities as one OF those
to help with the thrift stamp canvass
and he had, much as he disliked to do