The Cordova daily times., 1919-11-05
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THE BIG HOPE
By LAURA DREW.
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 his capital was dwindling to few dol lars, and nobody seemed to appreciate the value of his presence there in . business way.
 He had been so accustomed to the way people regarded him up home 1t had been distinct shock to be over looked. In Saginaw his father was the old lumber king, Jackson Lindley. His boats were leaders in lake shipping, his name power in state politics and he had just one son to slip into his place.
 The trouble was that son had inher- ited the temperament and looks of his mother, Nanon sevrier. a French Ca nadIan girl from the straits, whose dark eyes and capricious ways had drawn the silent Yankee lumberjack to her, back in the early days In the northern forests.
 Lindley had come out of Ann Arbor lust. His love affair with Bab Welles- ley had been a natural result. She was with little musical comedy company that happened to strike Saginaw on Its route up the lake, and to Lindley she was the personif1cation of the New York world he longed to see and be part of. In his senior way he had tried to meet her and make her four day stay a whirlwind memory, but the trouble was you couldn't find the mak- ings of a whirlwind in Saginaw. At the end of the motor trips and little suppers after the show Bab said gOOd-by.
 "You're an awfully nice kid, Lind, If you ever hit New York you'd get along great, if you'd keep your head and not be like they are down there."
 He had asked what she meant, and she had only shrugged her shoulders. Nothing, she had said, only nobody cared about anybody else down there. They weren't neighborly; they just didn't care whether you lived or died, even if you happened to be next door to them.
 You'll know what I mean if you ever go there" she added.
 Now he knew. He had moved from the McAlpin into a little furnished room on a side street. Not that he had to. He could have wired home for money, but he wanted to show the old man he could stand on his own and make good. There was nobody in the r0oming house who ever spoke to him excepting the old Irish woman xy,bn oop,o to ploop ryn biS roOO1
 But when he passed In and out he often saw a girl at the telephone In the lower hall. She attracted him oddly because she seemed like one of the girls back home.
 Then one night he was wakened by a smarting sensation in his throat, and he opened his eyes to find himself in gray cloud
 From the basement windows the smoke was pouring out thtckly. : man passed in the falling snow and he hailed him, telling him to turn in the alarm at the corner while he reused the rest of the house. He tried as he made his way through the smoke-filled halls to remember the people in the rooms above, but on the third landing Miss Donald met him, and she was wrapped in a long gray cloak.
 'I've called them all' she told him quietly. Tt is just the furnace. There isn't any real danger of fire. Nora for got to open the draughts before she went to bed. and the house Is filled with coal gas and smoke. It's all right now. She went down to fix it.
 "When there's so much smoke there isn't much flame, Mir. Lndey," she said seriously.
 "How did you know my name? l didn't think anybody in New York knew their neighbours names even," he told heD
 She laughed and hesitated.
 ".You see, I know some one who knows you. Bab Wellesley. She's in the same show I am this season up at the Jardin des Fleurs, a roof show, you know. I'm from the West, too, Omaha, and we're friends. She was down here to see me and recognized you as you came through the hall, but you didn't seem to remember her. But I know all about you, and I've wanted to talk to you so much and tell you to go back home"
 "Go back?" he repeated "Why?
 Before you lose your big hope. Bab wanted to be the new Marlowe and thought I would be at the opera in year, and here we are up there at the Jardin, and glad to get the en- gagement, too. Shes going home, too. I would, too. if I had any to go to, but my mothers dead and my fathers married again, so I'm not wanted"
 At the end of three months old Jack son Lindley landed in New York to look up his lone and only," as he told Nora when she led him into the old red brick house. And Nora broke the news to him confidentially and jubi-