The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-02-25

father at their lonely farmhouse on
the Cobb Hill road had secured a
place and intended to pay her own
way and care for herself by taking
employment in the local newspaper
Office.
j 1t was rega -ded as a rather radical
procedure for her to take her place
at the case alongside the fiotsam and
jetsom of hun,an life who commonly
lived off printing offices-and rub
/ shoulders with them in the days work
! Conservative parents commented dub
iously on the idea of mice" young
lady overhea-,ng the lun1berous ard
ofttimes highlE-hued talk circulating
among employees of printing estab-
lishment and taking up with the
grimy, monotonous, Darkroom life
which in those days was typical of
newspaper offices the nation over.
And conservative fathers and mothers
of mice" daughters frequently dis
cussing it when Mary Wood passed
by, it followed that those "nice"
daughters gradually came to acquire
the same ideas and rate Mary &C
cordingly.
It WAS I hard place in which to
place the girl, the more so because
she could not understand what lay
at the bottom of the snubs and jelly
bean social ostracisms which occurred
during that following autumn and
| winter.
She supposed-poor girl,-that the
lack of interest taken in her, the lack
of companionship on the part OF other
girls about the village, the failure 20
receive invitations to parties and
dances and village functions given by
the younge" set, was due to the un-
savory reputation which Silent
Wheeler had in the community, that
she was his step-daughte and a girl
who had come from "nohodies."
She laid it to her family; the fact
that she had come from the incon
sequental hamlet of North Foxboro;
that she could not aft or! to dress as
some of the other will age girls dress
ed and therefore offended those in
place to offer her social favors,-any
thing and everything but the truth.
1t was a thoughtless and cruel lit
tie small-town snobbery. Happily
the days of such provincialism are
over But the fact remains that Mary
was not fortunate enough to "get in
with the right people" She did her
work in the daytime faithfully and
Go - ,oIx p114 al
came and the labor was done until an
other morning, she went alone to the
cheap room at the top of MIS-.
Mathers' boarding and spent
her evenings by herself.
/ Once or twice the men in the Office
made advances 20 her; tried to iake
! her out and show her attention. But
!, they were coarse, rough printer-folk,
| here today and gone tomorrow. She
! Judged them intuitively at the true
value and gave them no encourage
ment.
Yet the talk which her employment
! in the office occasioned among the
'sbest" people was not match-fiare
alongside the commotion caused IN
! the "backroom" of our establishment
to have a girl of Mary Woods dainty
personality working side by side with
our mentoik, appealing 10 them with
| her questions and trade perplexities,
tickling their rough-shaven cheeks
! unintentionally with the truants
strands of her fipe-spun hair as she
bent with them over the forms, get
ting little daubs Of ink or type-case
CRIME on her features and only MAX
/ ing them the pretaier.
/ If the town people could only have
known, her presence IN the office made
a different place of the cluttered cid
room. 1t produced also startling
changes in the mo-al tonesn the e.s-
Establishment. Old daddy Joe the
ad-man, stopped splitting tobacco
! Juice on the floor and grinding it IN
with his boot. skinny Napoleon"
Higgins, lugubrious soul of exceed
! ing thinness who had once been jiit-
/ ed by a widow, ceased his morbid re-
creation OF setting lip his own obi
tuary in different styles and leaving
il around on galleys which we always
/ wanted it in a hurry, he stopped send
ing out every afternoon for a pail OF
beer, he sfa-ed three times week
and decla, ed that swearing had to