The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-04-27
Eoening Story
City Clothes.

BY B. K. JONES
To the residents of Holmes Center
who had assembled at the little rail-
road station one late June afternoon
there was nothing extraordinary or
unconventional In the fact that Gladys
Brock and George Ogden. the blue
eyed young school teacher and the
school principal to whom she had
been for some time engaged. should
be journeying away alone together,
tnchaperoned and unescorted.
Yet the journey consumed forty
eight hours, and neither Gladys nor
George had friends at their destina-
| ton. One glance at the rural peda-
gogues as they boarded the train there
at Holmes Center would have dis
armed even the most suspicious
Madame Gruudys.
The clothes they wore and the way
their frank, eager young faces, would
have treasured. Gladys wore a dark
pleated skirt, and, as every one knows,
the full pleated skirt in whatever
fective. But Holmes Center had
escaped the Paris revival of the alb
breyiated skirt, and Gladys, sensible
Gladys. would have worn hers long
anyway.
1t seemed prodigal to her to have
| a new skirt cut off short when long
skirts might come back into fashion
| and you never could make skirt
| longer that had once been turned up
short. She wore machine embroid-
cred white shirt waist of the sort that
retail at Holmes Center even in pre-
vailing high prices for two ninety
eight, and by way of a wrap that she
might possibly need she carried over
her arm a neatly, folded wooden scarf
| 81 The mail ordered cstalog had as
|
the place of separate Jackets, hence
| Gladys had invested in one for her
projected trip,
| And George-welI, he wasn't dressed
like a wild westerner nor like your
notion. of a farmer or hayseed. His
| suit was of a conventional shade OF
gray and his hat was not much be-
| hind the style-but from the angle at
which that hat was worn to the thick
| black polish that he had applied to
| ing you would have known at a glance
/ that he was not one to be at home in
the city of more than 10000.
They were going to one of the big
! cities, where large university at
| traeted hundreds of men and women
maturer than their regular students
| to drink at their wells of learning for
six or seven weeks in the summer.
| George was going to finish the work
needed to complete his requirements
earn at a rural college some years be-
| fore. and Gladys was going to take a
course in household administration"
with the double purpose of TAX
| ing the promotion the follow
| ing autumn to the position of do
| nestle science teacher in Holmes
Center high school, and even more
important consideration, of subse-
euently making herself the sort OF
housewife that she felt SO worthy
person as George Ogden deserved.
They had read the catalogs of the
biz university together, and together
tlye had made their plans. They had
figured expenses, too. for neither
wanted to cut toe. deep in their little
hoard of savings that had been put
aside to feather the nest in another
year or SO when they should be mar
ried.
George, because he was going to
take more courses, would have the
sreater expense, and to help defray
sort of work IN the city, altho the
university authorities advised those
taking a full course of summer work
not TO attempt to add TO their bur-
dens in the hot weeks of midsummer
by doing outside work. They had
dreamed of these weeks together in
the great center of learning, and if the
picture they had formed of that cen
ter was dissimilar, at least neither had
come any nearer the reality than the
other.
AS both had pictured it. they felt
that they would see much more of
each other than actually proved to be
the case For after they had gone to-
gether from the terminal in the great
city to the university in the outskirts
and each had gone to the dormitery
where rooms had been secured in ad-