New-York tribune., 1920-09-12
Dorothy for the day
By f1ENRr WuiEL WEBSTEp
MzUgZRA7wp BY E ID. GRUNEQ>~.

refusal. She'd gone on sending a
good-sized check every Christmas
rndeterred by the fact that they
always came back with a sarcastic
sentence or two from jeremiah.
Well, she scored on him at last. You
can't send back another persons
legacy even if she is your own
daughter.
The blow fell upon him at a bad
time, too, while he was still reeling
from another. 1t will need word
or two to tell about that. His bitter
est complaint for masy years had
been that there was no one in
Centropolis fit to talk to; not man
of education and taste to afford him
intellectual companionship. But
during the last year this want had
been supplied by the coming to town
of new principal for the high
school. His name was Herbert
Sheldon. His ambition. at this time
was to take his Phi. D. and become
a professor Of English literature in
a college. He believed that the last
English had been written in the
eighteenth century. 1t would have
been impossible to find anywhere
ideas more~congenial to Jerenliah's,
and many delightful evening the
two spent together discussing pre-
Chaucerian remains or debating
how much of "Pericles" Shakespeare
really wrote. Sometimes Dorothy
sat and listened. Sometimes when
jeremiah came home at 8 o'clock
on the evenings when his paper
went to press he found Herbert and
Dorothy together. When this hap
pened he twitted the younger man
on having forgotten that it was
one of the two evenings in the week
when he was always out till late
and expressed the hope that Dorothy
had not bored him. +,
If he had noted Herbert Sheldon'a
facial expression while he was MAX
ing these remarks he might have
been fortified against the blow which
fell the night the school master,
after a distracted attempt to talk
intelligently about Gammer Cur
toms Needle, blurted it out that he
wanted to marry Dorothy.
The unfortunate effect Of this
avowal was to make Jeremiah feel
ridiculous; sensation which he
bore very i'll. This, then, was what
the young fool had been spending
his evenings at the house for; con-
tact not with a mature, scholarly
mind, but with a silly girls hand
was what he'd been after. And
the devil of it was that at this cri-
sis his conscience failed him. All
his cudgelings failed to draw from
it an excuse in which to disguise his
anger as a solemn duty he owed
Dorothy. .......
AS said, it was while he was
still fuming with evaporation
under this affront that the lawyer S
letter came announcing his de-
ceased stepsister's treachery in,
making Dorothy her heiress. AL
ways she had been a thorn in his
flesh. Now, from the grave, she
dealt him the unreturnable blow.
To the best Of his ability jeremiah
passed his bitterness along.
So, perhaps, you will see why
Dorothy spoke of getting the legacy
as CHASTITY experience.
She had her own troubles without
that, too. She didn't know what to
do with this avowed lover Of hers,
and that's a fact. She liked him
rather we'll. She had been grateful
from the beginning for his thrice
weekly visits for putting her father
into good mood-one in which his
witty phrases stimulated but did not
sting. She came to associate Her
bert Sheldon's being about with a
sense of comfort and security. And
her discovery that he came to see
her, as we'll as her father, delighted
her. 1t was worth something to find
that her ideas-her really own ideas
of things-were good enough to in
terest as discriminating a person as
Herbert. But his formal offer of
marriage--a bolt absolutely out of
the blue, without even a premoni-
tory mutter of thunder-for her
wits, anyway, to detcct--literally
shocked her numb.
Jeremiah indicated to Dorothy
that if she were determined on mar
riage she couldn't do better than
take the professor. He gave his
consent.
The thing appeared to be settled.
Herbert kept on coming three
nights week. But two of these
nights, explicitly, were those when
her father went to the office to
make up the paper, When thew