New Britain herald., 1921-10-01

How Dieky Welcomed Bess Dean.
 Why had Bess Dean come to Cold Spring.
 The question puzzled me as I sauntered along the curving road with Junior clinging tightly to my hand, while Marion and the girl with whom my thoughts were occupied walked behind us.
 That, whatever her motive, she was bent upon making herself agree able to every one 1 knew from the effort she was putting forth to enter tain Marion-the child was in a gale of laughter before we had gone a few yards. And distinct effort on my former colleagues part l knew it to be, for she is one of those teachers successful in the more material sense iof pedagcgy-who rule thier pupils with maftinet discipline, and stage star performances in the line of final examinations but who detest their charges cordially, and are the object of an equally ardent hatred upon the part of their victims-I think the word is a, legitimate one. That she was "bored almost to ex- tinction'-a phrase I used frequent ly to hear upon her 1ips-by Marion, had no doubt, and her assiduous attention to the child made more in sistent the question lurking beneath the hospitable attitude I had forced myself to adopt toward her.
 Madge's Wish.
 That Dicky was somewhere in her scheme of things I was sure, but I acquitted her of any deep-seated in e terest in him. She is of altogether too coolblooded, too self-cntered a nature to let any man sway her in terest or her emotions to any great extent. I finally decided that the story she had told me of reading my description of the region, and decid- ing to come up was true as far as it went, but I was sure that the desire to avenge her vanity-her ruling weakness-of the wound given it by Dicky's refusal to let her pose for him, a refusal for which she justly held me responsible, had a great deal to do with her choice of this particu- lar portion of the Catskills for the last two weeks of her vacation.
 And I was more than sure that she would not rest until she had ac- complished the object that had briught ~Ser. There was no melodrama in 
 startling as the result of her visit but I knew that until she left the section there would be a succession of petty pinpricks for me, with the more than possibility of some bizarre and humiliating episode which should involve Dicky.
 Civilization and the usages of polite sociZy are terribly in the I,.,y followed my primitive instinct and spoken my real thoughts I would have turned upon her. curtly bade hel stop pretending to like Marion, an6 told her that entertaining her at the Cosgrove house was an impossibility Instead, I joined smilingly in the conversation from time to time, ant when we saw Dicky lounging at the gate waiting for us, lifted my voice and called him to hurry to mce her, as if she were a long-last sister
 .'This is Too Iuch-''
 Dicky is to be counted on in ever. social emergency. He always gauge correctly the mentality and tempera ment of each person he meets, an' tempers his greeting accordingly To Miss Dean he was gay, f1amboy ant, exaggerated, as at my call. an' after swift look at her, r strengthened from his lounging posi- tion and strode swiftly toward us.
 'It is! It isn't, It can't be, bu $ it is really you! he said with a, impressiveness calculated to mak any woman unused to him belev that he had been thinking of noth ing save her since he had last see her.
 k He held out both his hands as h spoke, and took her entirely willin