The Oakley herald. [volume] (Oakley, Idaho) 1908-1961, 1920-01-16


to give a grand ball in the mode Of the
English, who have ever danced, courted
and loved best when on the eve of
battle.
Andrea drew a long and quivering
sigh. Tomorrow the boys would
be gone. Tomorrow Aunty Gwen and
she would depart in state in the pri-
vate car her affianced, too busy to the
last for the soft prellminaries OF love,
had sent down from the high veldt.
Tomorrow - tomorrow would indeed
mark the beginning of the end. "The
end of what?" cried something within
her-that same something that had
so often spurred her to momentary
escape.
She felt a great dependency, ter
ror Of the morrow that would bring
the end of nothing but that neverthe-
less would mark the death Of part Of
Andrea Pellor. Then a more startling
emotion seized her. She realized. al
most with the sharpness of recoil,
that she was on the verge of becom-
ing forever a woman without his
| tory. She looked back and saw that
she had never done one outre thing
she looked forward and saw that she
down and
At her very feet was the coping that
edged the almost precipitous cliff.
Upon the pale stretch Of sand was
far-away blur, a dark, wide-winged
blot. She concentrated her unbeliev-
beyond doubt. 1t was an airplane.
Two midget figures moved around it
busily.
Andrea watched the midgets dream
lily and thought of all the stories she
had read about flying machine elope-
ments. AS she stood there her diaph-
anous second-best party dress and her
loosened hair stirred by the spice
laden breezes Of an Indian ocean dawn
and her eyes full of the still, fairy
light Of tropic moon, the thing dry
ing Its vast wings on the distant
sands seemed like giant moth,
strayed from some Arabian Night and
sent in answer to the cry of child
hoods valiant fancy.
Who were those midget dots? Were
they men or genii? Whence had they
come and whittier would they go? Did
they talk with tongues or like Brown
les, with their toes and eyes? Andrea
wondered all these things, suddenly
stopped wondering, skipped up the lad
der-like stair from the garden to her
room. snatched up warm cloak affair
which buttoned in a high collar at
her neck and that fell sheer in ever
widening folds from her shoulders to
her ankles, and in less time than it
would take to say Jack Robinson a
hundred and fifty times she was slip
ping and sliding down the path of
many slants.
She came upon the airplane so sud-
denly that she forgot to be disappoint-
ed at its gross materialism. 1t was
very real indeed; so were the men who
attended 1t. One was the tallest,
blacklist, nakedest native she had yet
seen, a mighty statue in unimagined
bronze paganly clothed only at the
loins with a spotted pelt. The other
was a white man gone brown in the
sun. He was neither very young nor
old, he carried himself erect with the
bearing of a man who Is full-grown
and knows 1t, and when he moved he
gave an exhibition of long, thin mus
cles under a perfect central control.
fn hn ~
smile that never wavered in spite
of the fact that he held a piece of
wire between his teeth and was other
wise intent on a number of things.
1t was the black man who first
sensed Andrea's presence and gave
warning to his master in a low, gut
tural, rolling string of flowing vowels.
The white man did not look round /;
he merely shrugged his shoulders and
went on with his job. Andrea watched
him in silence until she was convinced
that everything that could be done to
the machine was about to be accom-
plished and its proprietor on the verge
of flying away and then, emboldened
by that unwavering smile, she said in
such voice as children use when
pleading for cake, "Please, Mr.. Man,
take me with you"
She knew a good deal about flying
machines she knew they couldn't
stay up very long and that If they
were worth anything at all they inva-
riably came back to where they
started from like well-trained pigeons.
She had left her door locked and she
figured that she would be back long
before Aunty Gwen could work her
self up to the point of having it
broken in. When her voice rang across
the silence of the false dawn, clear
and light as a silver bell giving tongue
across snow. the white man started
and dropped the wrench he was ma
nipulating. He caught 1t In midalr;
then let it fail To the ground deuD-
erately and turned to look her over.
She was certainly something to see
and to wonder at. Her eyes of Irish
blue danced with light younger than