The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-03-06
CHAPTER xI.

CHAPTER XII.
And So, Having Placed the Heroes
and Heroines and the Villianesses
of Our Story Who Are to Work
Out Their Destiny AS Time Goes
On, We Come to the Memorable
Picnic Up in Blaisdell's Glen and
Evening in Gold-Piece Cabin.
Jack returned to consciousness on
the following morning with softly
sorrowfull bittersweet presentiment
haunting his subconscious mind. 1t
was the presentiment people expert
Arce who awake the morning after a
bankruptcy or the death of a very
dear friend. He tried to think what
it was-that feeling within him of
mysterious heartache that wasn't
really heartache Then it came to
him that it was the way he had come
to think of the girl, Mary Wood, aug
mented by her argument with Mlbbl
of the evening before. 1t was the
sentiment of love and wifehood and
motherhood to which she had given
expression. He lay with arms behind
his head, the robbins and sparrows
noisy in the trees outside his window,
the morning breeze waiting the mus
lin curtains gently and passed from
dreams with his eyes closed to dreams
with his eyes open.
Mary Wood had suddenly come
nearer and dearer to him than she
had been at any time since he had
known her. Ordinarily, indeed, the
young folk of the town did not dis
cuss things" as frankly as they had
talked that previous evening-that is,
not unless Mibb was present and in
her ultra-modern way attacked some
such subject fearlessly, bluntly, tact
lessly. But since it had happened
and Mary had made her reply, it was
rs though the boy had been privileged
to enter the private chamber of her
heart and look upon her nudity-the
nudity of her soul and the manner of
woman which she was. Somehow
when a man has viewed in that mud
ity the woman whom he loves, there
is a strange, wild, primordial tie bind
IL
can never quite be broken. And in
turn a woman whom man has
come to know that way is never
angry with the man for having
looked upon that nudity-not when
he is the man she loves; which is
another manifestation that the tie is
there and connecting them. And SO
had the young man been permitted to
enter into something which up to that
time was the modest, sweet, pure girl
had guarded as she guarded her VIZ
tue but which had been revealed to
him because she loved him. Truly in
the talk, abetted by love and the
witchery of the summer night and the
moonlight, the girl had laid bare her
soul and the primordial in the man
was around and awakened.
That longing and heart-hunger for
her, was amounting to physical pain.
Yet it was wonderful time in which
he was living-a time which would
never come again, time to which he
would look back with soft sadness IN
many many after years. TO ARISE
and meet the morning meant another
day of working with her in the office,
of hundrer pretty graces and coquet-
teries when she was with him, of
walks in the evening when the valley
was hushed and the town rested from
its labor and the dusk such as no city
knows nor can understand, came
down and embodied it in it's mantei.
And the blood mounted to his temples
as his financial helplessness and pros
poets came up before him and taunt-
cd him.
At the Office the talk was of the
picnic up the Glen that afternoon
celebration for the success of the To-
cal talent play.
The ex-players met on the Opera
House steps The girls had generous
baskets of which the boys relieved
them as they arrived with awkward
greetings meant to be funny and al
which the girls laughed as they were
supposed to laugh. Quickly they
pared off: Jack and Mary; Mibb ane
Slug Truman; Sam Hold and Alice
Harriet Babcock and Frank Whit
comb; even George Griffin and ths