The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-03-01

Mr.. Silvernail glanced up from un- der his gray brows and the brim of his new brown hat when his daughter, Nancy, appeared bearing the garden hose and scrub brush. Mr. Silvernail was beautifully polished and suitably clad old gentleman, with smile as toothless and beguiling as a baby's and winning benignity of counte- nance-when things went to suit him. But such facts as his elderly daughter with her scrub brush and hose did not please him.
 What you going to do?" he de- handed.
 lin going to clean the porch, fa- ther," Nancy had the suppressed tone and manner of daughter whose life is one long self immolation because of fixed principles of filial duty.
 Going to wet things all up with that hose, eh? Going to slosh with that brush? What for?"
 ''The dust, father, is getting thicker than the paint. thought" Nancy tried to speak cheerfully, ''that you wouldn't mind just moving round to the back porch for little while this morning. It's really very pleasant there."
 Its pleasant here. Oh, dear, dear!" Mir. Silyernail hoisted himself out of his chair. Nancy" he exploded, "I'll tell you what. You're getting to be too much of an old maid. You act as if there wasn't thing in the world worth living for but housework. It's all fool ishness to dig and scrub the way you do. A little dirt never hurt anybody yet. Why, we've all got to be buried in dirt" ended Mir. Silvernail conclu- siyely.
 Nancy flushed and her lips quivered. She was pretty, plump woman of 40, with a few gray threads in her smooth, dark hair. If she had said what she might have said and perhaps should have said under the circumstances, she would have told her father that she was an old maid because he had scared away the only lover she had ever had. Peter Ross had given her up, and she had given him up because her father objected to his daughter mar rying a mere garage man. It was true that Peters garage was fourishing and that she would have done very well to have married him. It was also true that her father had long since forgotten the part he had played in the matter. When you are so you forget so easily all the things which it makes your life pleasanter to forget! Mir. Silvernail had nothing to trouble him except such minor disturbances as his daughters cleaning up days.
 It was pleasant on the back porch, but not pleasant enough to suit MT. Silvernail this morning. He was dis tinctly ruffled. Things had come to pretty pass when little dust was made of more importance than his com fort. Dust-dust! He hadn't seen any of it. It didn't bother him. Nancy was getting to be nuisance with her old-maidishness Sometimes he felt quite tired of her. She wasn't the woman her mother had been. No, sir-ee! Sometimes he felt that he'd like to run away from the whole shoot ing match. That would teach Nancy not to drive him out of his favorite corner on a sunny morning.
 Mfr. Silvernail thumped the arm of his chair with his plump palm and grew more aggrieved each moment. Sud- denly his feelings overpowered him and he started up. He did not have his cane, that was in the hall rack, but he guessed he could do without it-or Nancy's arm. Confound it, he wasn't quite an antediluvian yet.
 Mir. Silvernail made his way to the street unperceived by his daughter who was busy at the farther end fof the porch, "sloshing water to her hearts content" as he bitterly thought. He