The Connecticut labor press., 1919-12-13

with the elevator boy, on the way, l that it was getting to be a mighty nasty wet and windy day outside.
 The elevator boy noticed nothing un- usual about him and neither did Fanny,
 when she came in from church with
 her hat ruined, an hour later And yet something had happened-a thing which, years ago, had been the eager
 est hope of many, many good citizens l of the town. They had thought of It. l longed for 1t, hoping acutely that they | might live to see the day when 1t would
 come to pass. And now it had hap l pened at last: GeOrgie Minafer had l got his cOme-upance.
 He had got it three times filled and running over. The city had rolled over his heart burying it under, as 1t rolled
 over the Majors and buried it under. | The city had rolled over the Amber sons and buried them under to the last vestige; and it mattered little that George guessed easily enough that most of the five hundred Most Promi- l nent had paid something substantial ito defray the cost of steel engraving, ] etc."-the Five Hundred had heaved l the final shovelful of soot upon that heap of obscurity wherein the Amber 1 sons were lost forever from sight and | history. "Quicksilver in a nest of cracks !"
 Georgie Minafer had got his come | upance, but the people who had so longed for it were not there to see 1t, and they never knew 1t. Those who were still living had forgotten all | about it and all about him.
 George had seen Eugene only once since their calamttOus encounter. They had passed on opposite sides of the | street, downtown; each had been aware that the other was aware of him, and yet each kept his eyes straight forward, and neither had shown perceptible alteration of coun- tenance. It seemed to George that he felt emanating from the OutWardly i'm perturbable person of his mothers old friend hate that was like hot wind. At his mothers funeral and at the Majors he had been conscious that Eugene was there: though he had aft erward no recollection of seeing him, and, while certain of his presence, was | uncertain how he knew of 1t. Fanny had not told him, for she understood George we'll enough not to speak to him of Eugene or Lucy. Nowadays Fanny almost never saw either of them and seldom thought of them-so sly is the way of time with life. She was passing middle age, when old in- tensities and longings grow thin and ! fatten out, as Fanny herself was thin ming and fattening out; and she was settling down contentedly to her apart ment-house intimacies.
 The city was so big, now, that peo- pie disappeared into 1t unnoticed, and the disappearance of Fanny and her nephew was not exceptional. People no longer knew their neighbors as a matter of course; one lived for years next doerrtO strangers sharpest of all the. changes since the old days and a friend would lose sight of friend fora year, and not know 1t. One May day George thought he had glimpse of Lucy. He was not cer- tain, but he was sufficiently disturbed, in spite of his uncertainty. A promo tion in his work now frequently took him out of town for a week, or longer, and it was upon his return from one of these absences that he had the strange experience. He had walked home from the station, and as he turned the COZ her which brought him in sight of the apartment house entrance, though two blocks distant from it, he saw a charm ing little figure come out, get into a shiny landaulet automobile, and drive away. Even at that distance no one could have any doubt that the little figure was charming; and the height, the quickness and decision of motion, even the swift gesture of white glove toward the chauffeur-all were char acteristic of Lucy. George was instant ly subjected to shock of indeflnable nature, yet definitely a shock: he did not know what he felt-but he knew that he felt. He went on slowly, his knees shaky.
 But he found Fanny not at home; she had been out all afternoon; and there was no record of any caller and he began to wonder, then to doubt if the small lady he had seen in the distance was Lucy It might as wen nave DCeL, 1IS SdIu lO AlILIS0II-SIuCc anyone who looked like her could give him "a jolt like that!"
 Lucy had not left a card. She never left one when she called on Fanny; though she did not give her reasons a quite definite form in her own mind She came seldom; this was but the third time that year, and, when she did come, George was not mentioned, either by her hostess or by herself-an oddity cOntrived between the two ladies without either of them realizing how odd it was.
 At other times Lucy's thoughts of George were anything but continuous, and weeks went by when he was not consciously in her mind at all. Her" life was busy one: she had the big house ito keep up;" she had a garden to keep up, too, a large and beautiful garden; she represented her father as a director for half a dozen public char ity organizations, and did private charity work of her own, being q proxy mother of several large families and she had "danced down." as she said, groups from, eight or nine classes of new graduates returned from the uni without m0rrvinO of