The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-08-07
EVENING STORY
On the Edge of Things.
BY WILL T. AMES.

All her life Florabel Warner had
been on the edge of things. To be-
gin with. she had been on the edge
of the inheritance of a fair chance in
life-and straightway her mother
elected to handicap her with the
name she had since borne, and then
her father failed in business and died,
leaving his daughter to the impending
fate of double orphanhood- For Mrs.
Warner. as might have been expected
of one who would name a child Flora
bel. had some time since developed an
interesting Victorian case OF tubercu-
Iosis, alias "a decline" which sent her
to her grave and Florabel to an tnsti-
tuition for berett children.
Then a rich woman, who was TAX
ing stock of orphans with view to
adoption. had finally decided on Sc
lecting Florabel when the latter, bored
by an interrninable interview between
visitor and matron. Nyawned and ex-
posed to the quick eyes OF her al
most foster mother the unusual fact
that she had two rows of teeth from
the first moIars back. Double rows of
teeth are weirdly uneanny to some
persons of nervous temperament. Mrs.
Etherby was rather nervous. 1t was
all off.
Then, when Florabel did have the
good fortune to be taken by a tender
hearted woman of small tho sufficient
means, it was her luck that that good
but sentimental lady should fall vic
tim to the brilliant campaign of
gentleman who forgot to mention, I'M
til after their marriage, that he was
the widowed father of an active fam
lily of four. The family he brought
to live with and at the expense of
Breen. Breen spent most of his time
shooting pool. 1t was short commons
all around.
Furthermore, when Florabel, to
whom high school education had be-
come as-the road to all happiness,
finally obtained the frightened con-
sent of her overburdened foster
mother. she failed in her examina-
lions by falling an even one per cent
under the stipulated average. After
that she almost got place at a mill
liners, but was five minutes too late.
And now that she was an usher in
the Imperial Picture Palace, and head
over heels in love with the head opera
tor, along must come this Peters girl,
just at the very hour, almost, when Ned
Morse was all primed up to the point
Of declared responsiveness, and just
walk Oft with Fllorabers fellow as easy
as anything. 81 never saw anything
like it in my lifer' walled Florabel in
the solitude of her tiny room. Which
was quite untrue, since she / ad never
seen anything greatly different.
Florabel was almost eighteen by this
time and had been steering lottery old
gentlemen and obstinate old ladies into
flashlighted seats for the better part
OF two years at the Imperial Palace.
In the course of those years she had
learned how to dispose of the freshies
hTiafnSf nnCcih1a
were so many of them, and so many
times did they make precisely the
same speeches and undertake precise
ly the same advances, that it had be-
Come matter of sheer automatism for
FIorabel 10 ask If they'd like to have
her call the cop for them to tell the
story to their love to: she never re-
membered one of these incidents for
two minutes.
But one day there came into the
theater, just after the opening of the
| doors. positively the freshest thing 1
ever saw in all my born daysi" as
Florabel described him to the girl on
the next aisle.
The freshest thing was young man
| in palm beach suit and straw hat,
whose neci1tie was a screaming chorus
| or color and who bore in one hand an
| undisgufsed suit of overalls and in
the other an equally frank tool kit
"A swell in a morning coat on Fifth
I n,
nave Deen a better study in contrasts.
He was red-headed and short, and
| across his face, from above his right
| ear to the opposite corner of his chin,
was a noticeable scar. He breezed past
the doorkeeper. whose protests he re-
garded not at all, and made directly
| for FlorabeI
Hello. sweetheart" he said without
preliminary of any sort; ''you'n mes
going to have a dish of chop or
sumep.n in your relief time-d'you
| Know it? Surest thing But where's
the way to the gun position? I'm from
the Jumbo Protector company, an
| I've got to put the mash into one of
your machines. Tell me where to go
| and when you're off"
I amt ever off to smarties like you,
| mister. What do you think 1 am, a
| tramp? can feed myself Take that
| door at the end of the right aisle, and
when you get up there. if 1 was you,
! wouldn't be so fresh or you'll come
| down thru the air. There's a grown
/ up man up there"
| "Oh-ho Thataway? All right, chick,
! but you've got a date, remember"
1t was then that Florabel described
| the visitor to the girl in the next aisle.
She was genuinely indignant at the
| youths unwarranted familia rity, but
| such is the. psychological experiences
| of the theater usher that the girl on
the next aisle said to the girl on the
third aisle within three minutes there
after: "Betcha she goes with him!"
And she did.
Joseph Jefferson Zines combined
| the brazen effrontery of a sideshow
barker with the courage of a bearcat
and the direct efficiency of a kick in
/ the stomach.
! Listen. infant he began while
they were waiting for their chop. tea
| and rice cakes in the Far Orient res
! taurant. I'm the busiest thing on
this side of the water. I'm some little
| protector tinker, and I'm out en- this
| circuit on week trips. They gimme
all anybody can do in seven days
every time start out, and I have to
do 1t in five. So 1 don't have any
| minute got inside the door, an