The St. Johns herald., 1922-11-16
I-Continued.


 At length they rose. Monona flung herself upon her father. He put her aside firmly, every inch the father. No, no. Father was occupied now. Mrs. Deacon coaxed her away. MonOna encircled her mothers waist, lifted her own feet from the floor and hung upon her. "She's such an active child" Lulu ventured brightly.
 "Not unduly active, I think" her brOther-in-law observed.
 He turned upon Lulu his bright smile, lifted his eyebrows, dropped his lids, stood for moment contemplat- ing the yellow tulip, and so left the room.
 Lulu cleared the table. Mrs. Dea- con essayed to wind the clock. We'll, now. Did Herbert say it was twenty three tonight when 1t struck the half hour and twenty-one last night, or twenty-One tonight and last night twenty-three? She talked of it as they cleared the table, but Lulu did not talk.
 Cant you rememberl" Mrs. Dea- con said at last. "I should think you might be useful"
 Lulu was lifting the yellow tulip to set 1t on the sill. She changed her mind She took the plant to the wood shed and tumbled it with force upon the chip-pile.
 The dining room table was laid for breakfast. The two women brought their work and sat there. The child MOnOna hung miserably about, watch ing the clock. Right or wrong, she was put to bed by it. She had eight minutes more-seven-gix-
 Lulu laid down her sewing and left the room. She went to the woodshed, grOped about in the dark, found the stalk of the one tulip flower in its heap on the chip-pile. The tulip she fastened in her own on her fiat chest.
 Outside were to be seen the early stars. It is said that if our sun were as near to Arcturus as we are near to our sun, the great Arcturus would burn our sun to nothingness.
 
 In the Deacons' parlor sat Bobby Larkin, eighteen. He was in pain all over. He was come on an errand which civilization has contrived to make an ordeal.
 Before him on the table stood pho tograph of Diana Deacon, also eighteen. He hated her with passion. At school she mocked him, aped him, whispered about him, tortured him. For two years he had hated her. Nights he fell asleep planning to build a great house and engage her as its servant.
 Yet, as he waited, he could not keep his eyes from this photograph. It was Di at her curliest, at her fufhest, Di conscious of he- bracelet, Di smil- ing. Bobby gazed, his basic aversion to her hard-pressed by a most reluc- tant pleasure. He hoped that he would not see her, and he listened for her voice.
 Mir. Deacon descended upon him with an air carried from his supper hour, bland, dispensing. Welll Let us have it. "What did you wish to see me aboutr'-with a use of the past tense as cOnnoting something of indi- rectiOn and hence of delicacy-a nicety customary, yet unconscious. Bobby had arrived in his best clothes and with an air of such formality that Mir. Deacon had instinctively suspect ed him of wanting to join the church. and, to treat the time with due sol emnity, had put him in the parlor un- til he could attend at leisure.
 Confronted thus by Dis father, the tpeech which Bobby had planned de serted him.
 T thought if you would give me a 5Ob," he said defenselessly.
 "So that's itI" MT. Deacon, who aI- ways awaited but touch to be either Irritable or facetiOus, inclined now to