Evening star., 1919-04-27

and listened to the sleep sounds that
came from the depths of 200 similar
hammocks suspended at regular in
tervals down the long dark room.
A chorus OF deep, regular breathing,
with an occasional grunt or sigh, de-
noting complete relaxation Tyler
Ramps should have been part Of this
chorus himself. Instead, he lay star
ing into the darkness. thinking mad
thoughts, Of which this is a sample
Gosh. Wouldn't like to sit up in
my hammock and give one yell! The
kind Of yell a movie cowboy gives
on Saturday night. Wake 'em up
and stop that dardned old breathing
Nerves. He breathed deeply him
self once or twice, because it seemed
somehow to relieve his feeling Of irri-
tation. And in that unguarded mo-
ment Of unconscious relaxation sleep,
that had been lying in walt for him
Just around the corner, pounced on
him and claimed him for its own.
The trouble with Tyler Ramps was
that he missed two things he hadn't
expected to miss at all. And he missed
not at all the things he had been
prepared to miss most hideousiy.
First of all, he had expected to
miss his mother. IL you had known
Stella Ramps you could readily have
understood that Stella Ramps was
the kind of mother they sing about
in the sentimental ballads; mother.
pal and sweetheart. Which was where
she had made her big mistake. When
one mother tries to be all those things
TO one son that son has a very 1alr
chance Of turning out mollycodole.
Tho war was probably all that saved
Tyler Ramps from such a fate.
In the way she handled this son OF
hers Stella Ramps had been as crafty
and skillful and velvet -gloved as a girl
with her beau. The proof of it is that
Tyler had never known he was being
handled. Some folks in Marvin, Tex
said she actually firted with him. and
they were almost justified. Certainly
the way she glanced up at him from De-
meath her lashes was excused only by
tho way she scolded him II he tracked
up the kitchen floor. But then, Stella
Ramps and her boy were different, any
way. Marvin folks all agreed about
that. Flowers on the table at meals
sitting over the supper things talking
and laughing for an hour after they'd
finished eating, as II they hadn't seen
each others In years. Reading out loud
to each other, out Of books, and then
going on like mad about what they'd
Just read, and getting all het up about
it, And sometimes chasing each other
around the yard spring evenings, IKE
a couple Of fool kids. Honestly, II
body didn't know Stella Ramps so well
and what fight she had put up to earn
a living for herself and the boy after
that good or-nothing Ramps up and
left her, and what housekeeper she
was, and all, a person'd think-well--
SO, then, Tyler had expected to miss
her first of all. And new he missed her
only as the average boy OF twenty-one
misses the mother he has been used to
all his life. He had expected to miss
tho boys at the bank He had expected
to miss the Mandolin Club The Man
dolin Club met, officially. every Thurs
day and spangled the Texas night with
their tinkling. He had expected to miss
the familiar faces on Main street. All
the hundred little, intimate, trivial
everyday things that had gone to make
up his life back home in Marvin, Tex
these he had expected to miss.
And he didn't.
After ten weeks at the Great Central
Naval Training Station so near Chicago,
ILL.,, and SO far from Marvin, Tex,
there were two things he missed.
He wanted the decent privacy OF his
small, quiet bedroom back home.
He wanted to talk to a girl
He knew he wanted the first. def
nitely. He didn't know he wanted
the second. The fact that he didn't
know 1t was Stella Ramps fault. She
had kept his boyhood girlless, year
and year, by sheer force Of her own
love for him, and need Of him, and
by the charm and magnetism that
were hers.
A hot enough little room in the
Texas winters--but his own.
Until he came to the Great Central
naval training station Tyler's nearest
approach to the nautical life had
been when. at the age of six, he had
sailed chips in the washtub in the
back yard. Marvin, Tex. is 500 miles
inland. And yet he had enlisted in