Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1922-06-08
Copyright, 1870, by The Wheeler Syndicate, Inc.

In Spartan, which lies like a picture
puzzle between the tawny cornfelds
and the smutty coalfelds of Illinois,
the rain-crow flies low when autumn
threatens, croaking of wet days and
chest protectors, of nights filed with
the commotion of wind and leaves flop
ped wetly against windowpanes like
homeless hands tapping.
Then, and oh, so surely, come the
melancholy days themselves, and
everybody's picket-fenced-in garden
turns to mud with a pull to it, suck
ing in overshoes and oozing up slip
perily over the plank sidewalks.
Wagon wheels slither along the un.
made streets as il cutting through
cold grease. Children, rejoicing in
double-session, bob homeward an hour
earlier beneath their enveloping sm-
brellas like procession Of low mush-
rooms. .4l@ 3
Factory hands, their homes in the
very gigantic shadow Of the yelling
n-Lowney Consolidated Wire Works,
carry with them groteseue newspaper
packs of lunch against monday and
rain-driyen return home. On such days
the Wellington-Lowney Consolidated
Wire Works provides each of its five
hundred employees a tin Of hot coffee
and five-minute period to drink it.
The box-shaped houses Of Spartan,
gray as old wimples, drip rheumy
tears from tin cutters. All of an ex-
preston, with their second-story win
dows set fiat, like frogs eyes. the
square parlor window with the shade
drawn and the slanting bit OF roof
over the small front door. Much In
effect these houses dripping, as If
statue done in the manner the Greeks
loved to chisel them, with eyes not
marred by pupils or irises, should sud-
denly and without change of express
sion thaw to tears.
Before Steven Kineady's square
faced house the garden lay beaten into
the mud, buried half alive. A row Of
igeraniums with brown bruised heads
died as they waited for their usual
transplanting to tin can and kitchen
window-sill.
Within that kitchen, the rain hard
as sleet against the windowpane, and
beside the range wool shawl and a
pair of woman's overshoes exuding.
Annie Kineady, her hair the color of
red Goals, disheveled in her black
thick stuff dress and her large white
hands clasped at the back Of her neck,
lay low In her rocker beside the range,
face upturned to the squat ceiling and
a rain of tears slashing it.
If only i was laying out next to
my baby, Liddy. If only was!"
Opposite her, erect in q sawed-of
chair, Liddy Kineady swallowed
through SO tight throat that cords
sprang out in her long fieshless neck.
Its a sin before the Lord that a
wife should take on so, Annie Beasley
Kineady-a sin before the Lord, and
he could strike you down for it."
At that Annie Kineady leaned for
ward In her chair, wet lips parted and
her bosom, high as Juno's, rising.
''Then why don't He, Liddy? Why
don't Her.
"Girl, girl, it's afraid ] am even to
listen to you, for fear you'll be struck
down before my eyes!" And she with
drew, shuddering, to the stove side.
"Why doa't He? What / got left2
WhatY'
SAINT you got your husband? Your
big. likely husband, girl? What in the
good Lords name has got you? Come
what will, he's your husbandw
"Yes, Liddy, but"
"You that's been the one all these
three weeks to comfort him and keep
him away fren the terrible blues that
gets him when he comes home nights,
all of sudden to turn like-like this,
Annie"
''Yeh, to comfort him. To-comfort
him. BAIL"
Liddy Kineady fell to fumbling deep
In region Of her black petticoat for
her handkerchief, blinking back the
oozing tears, and while she fumbled,
her streaming gaze fixed on nothing
in particular between the range and
the indoor cistern. Rain battered like
pepper shot
"To think I'm sitting here in my
brothers own house listening to his
own wife only five years after"
Five years."
"Yes, Annie Beasley Kineady, five
years since that April morning you
stood up with him in the back parior
of your millinery shop and was mar
ried to him."
Sod, five yearsp
''Five years, and you knew what you
was doing and Dragged about 1t. He
wasn't saint, but he wasn't devil,
neither, and it is more'n you can ex-
pect Of any man he should be morn
middlin'."
ooh, Liddy, what does mans sis
ter know about"
"Sisterl Didn't I raise him like a
mother? Raised that hoy mofhprin'