The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1931-04-17
The Sealed Tru1lk

coming to tell her. She buried her
face in the crook of her arm and lay
perfectly still, and the nurse, believing
her asleep. went away again, shutting
the door after her.
At thar. quite suddenly, her mind
went to work. What had her father
been trying TO tell her, in that last
flicker of his consciousness? But
thinking about that, she decided at
last, wouldn't do any good. The frag-
mentary words worked out to two op-
posite meanings.
He might, of course, have been tell
ing her to go to Uncle William and
that she'd find his address among his
papers. But he might have meant that
she was to look out for Uncle Will
liam and not let him get possession Of
the papers. And since her uncle was
had been four years ago, it was the
latter Interpretation that she adopted
What the doctor had said was the
thing that frightened her worst.
"You're only little girl ~
That, of course. was nonsense. She
was sixteen and lots of people thought
she was older than that. She could
pass for eighteen, well enough. He'd
said that only because he was sorry
for her. But ;ixteen was still child
according to law. You weren't of age
until you were eighteen-or was it
twenty-One? And if Uncle William
knew where she was and learned of
her fathers death, he'd come and get
her, and she wouldn't be able to get
away from him. Well then. the only
safe thing for her to do was to dis
appear before he had time to find
out what had happened.
Looking back now on those days,
after the passage of two years so
packed with life that they seemed
longer than the four that had pre-
ceded them, she wondered that she. a
mere child of sixteen, had been able
to follow out that resolution so stead
lily that no one had tried to put an
obstacle in her path.
Except for a telegram, purporting
to come from Florabel in Denver,
which she had slipped out early that
morning and dispatched to herself
she had nothing to show anyone as an
indication that she had friend in the
wOrld-and the telegram wasn't much
good since if you looked at it closely
you saw that it hadn't come from
Denver at all.
She couldn't have done it, of course,
If she had not had plenty OF money,
and, likely enough, not then if the
hotel people hadn't been accustomed
to her paying the bills. She paid
everybody in cash, that morning, and
when this was done she had little
over three hundred dollars left, fifteen
twenty-dollar bills and few small
ones.
The papers her father had tried to
tell her something about had always
been kept in a big leather hat trunk
that must have been her mothers
She opened it and looked in with the
idea of seeing whether her uncle's ad-
dress was there, but as the trunk was
nearly full she decided against going
through it. She didn't much want to,
anyway. She took it, as it was, along
with her own small trunk in taxi to
a convenient railway station. 1t hadn't
mattered much which station except
that it had 10 be one that had train
that went to Denver,
The next day she look her suitcase
with her to the funeral and went from
the cold little chapel straight back to
the station. She spent that night at
the Y. w. @. A., where nothing hap
pened except that by inadvertence she
picked her new name. She'd had one
all chosen, but when they gave her the
ing her old one, Rhoda Whitehouse
Mcfarland. Halfway through she'd
seen what she was doing and stopped
Well, Rhoda White made a good
enough name, and she was glad that
she hadn't discarded Rhoda. She'd
have felt lonely, deprived If that.
The very next day she found job
and met Babe Jennings The job was
at the News, where Florabel had told
her they took girls without experience
in the stenOgraphic department and
trained them, themselves. If you were
good you had chance to be promoted
to be private stenographer or even
secretary to one of the executives.
The only technical untruth RhOda
told the employment manager was that
her name was RhOda White.
Her acquaintance with Babe had
progressed slowly at first, and it
wasn't until she'd been working for
the paper six months that the older
girl approached her with a proposal
that they live together. Babe was ex-
cited about an ad she'd taken, of a
studio for rent cheap; unbelievably
cheap, seventy-five dollars a month.
1t was really whole apartment; two
bedrooms and a kitchenette, beside the
studio itself. Her scheme was that
they get two other girls and that the
four of them should keep house in 1t,
getting, that is, their owl breakfasts
and suppers. The other two girls were
dancers, members of the corps du
ballet Of the opera.
They taught her to dance-the other
girls had phonograph-and it be-
came passion with her. Shed dance
with anybody, who could dance well,
in perfect oblivion of delight.
She liked her job and wasn't long
getting promoted to be special stenog-
rapher to one of the younger men on
the executive staff. The only imper-
lection in her whole scheme of life
was the little tremor of fear she felt,