Cleveland County herald., 1920-01-01

| N-NNN so pG ScullS! 1 uOH cure to De handled with gloves! I tell you I was right, and l don't need any coddling by people that think I wasn't! And l suppose you believe was wrong not to let Morgan see her that last night when he came here, and she-she was dying. If you do, why in the name of God did you come and ask me? You could have taken him in! She did want to see him. She"
 Miss Fanny looked startled. "You think"
 "She told me sop And the tortured young man choked. "She said-'iust onee.' She said I'd like to have seen him-just once! She meant-to tell him good-bye! That's what she meant! And you put this on me, too i; you put this responsibility on me! But l tell you, and I told Uncle George, that the responsibility isn't all minel If you were so sure I was wrong all the time-when I took her away, and when I turned Morgan out ii you were so sure, what did you let me do it for? You and Uncle George were grown people, both of you, weren't you? You were older than l, and if you were so sure you were wiser than I, why did you just stand around with your hands hanging down, and let me go ahead? You could have stopped it if it was wrong, couldn't you?"
 Fanny shook her head. "No, George" she said slowly. Nobody could have stopped you. You were too strong, and"
 And what?" he demanded loudly.
 And she loved you--too well"
 George stared at her hard, then his lower lip began to move conyulsively, and he set his teeth upon it but could not check its frantic twitching.
 He ran out of the room.
 She sat still, listening. He had plunged into his mothers room, but no sound came to Fanny's ears after the sharp closing of the door; and pres ently she rose and stepped out into the hall-but could hear nothing. What interview was sealed away from human eye and ear within the lonely 1 darkness on the other side of that door-in that darkness where Isabel's own special chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great wal nut wardrobes filled with her dresses and wraps? What tragic argument might be there vainly striving to con- flute the gentle dead? "In Gods name, what else could I have done?" For his mothers immutable silence was surely answering him as Isabel in life would never have answered him, and he was beginning to understand how eloquent the dead can be. They can not stop their eloquence, no matter how they have loved the living; they cannot choose. And so, no matter in what agony George should cry out, "What else could I have done?" and to the end of his life no matter how often he made that wild appeal, Isabel was doomed to answer him with the Wistful, faint murmur.
 "Id like to haYe-seen him. Just once."
 A superstitious person might have thought it unfortunate that | Fanny's partner in speculative indus | try as in Wibur's disastrous rolling mills, was that charming but too hap hazardous man of the world, George Anderson. He was one of those Op- timists who believe that if you put money into a great many enterprises one of them is sure to turn out for tune, and therefore, in order to find the lucky one, it is only necessary to go into a large enough number of them.
 "You ought to have thought of my record and stayed out" he told Fanny, one day the next spring, when the af- fairs of the headlight company had begun to look discouraging. Things do look bleak, and I'm only glad you didn't go into this confounded thing to the extent did"
 Miss Fanny grew pink. "But it must 20 right U" she protested. "We saw with our own eyes how perfectly it worked out in the shop. It simply
 "Oh you're right about that" Am berson said. ''It certainly was a per feet thing-in the shopl"
 But think of that test on the road when We"
 "That test was lovely" he admitted. eThe inventor made us happy with his oratory, and you and Frank Bronson and I went whirling through the night at a speed that thrilled us. We must never forget it-and we never shall. It cost"
 "But something must be done."
 .It must indeed! My something would seem to be leaving my watch at my uncle's. Luckily, you"
 The pink of Fanny's cheeks became deeper. "But isn't. that man going to td do anything to remedy it? Can't he try to-"
 "He can try" said Anderson. "He is trying, in fact. I've sat in the shop watching him try for several beautiful afternoons"
 "But you must make him keep on