The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1931-02-06
THE
MYSTERIOUS
IMPULSE
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By Fannie Hurst
Co. Mcclure Newspaper syndicate,

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~ VERYONE in the hotel bowed in
~ acknowledgment to Eleanor
1 Morley's impeccable quality of
sweetness in her treatment of
her mother. This included Mrs. Midge-
ly herself, who recognized how fortu-
nate she was in possessing a daughter
| like Eleanor. And there was plenty
of time for reflection like this to flow
through the brain of Mrs. Midgely. To
one as accustomed to leisure as she,
the days offered plenty of leisure to
do countless things she had never
found the moments to do during the
years she was struggling as widow
to rear Eleanor, educate her and keep
going the small Connecticut farm left
her by her husband, who had died of
exposure trying to coax fecundity from
a sparse and rocky bosom.
Since Eleanor's marriage to the
Spencer Morley of the well-known
chocolate minis, Mrs. Midgely was en-
titled to feel that she was more than
compensated in leisure, repose and
comfort for the long, lean years when
she had carried on her small and pa
tient-looking shoulders duties that
should have been shared by three or
four.
The Morleys and Mrs. Midgely oc-
cupied a spacious three-rOom suite on
the bay-window corner on the eighth
floor of a modern uptown apartment
hotel They shared a common bath
of white tile with an inlay of green
ducks swimming above the tub. The
sitting room contained a bright bay
window, with EIeanor's growing plants
and canary bird. There was piano
strewn with Eleanor's music, small
white poodle dog which slept twenty
hours day on pink silk cushion and
small printed sign nailed to the door
which held out to the guests not only
rules and regulations, but every offer
Of comfort. Eleanor and Spencer oc-
cupied a nice square bedroom, rather
dark because it faced a court, fur
nished in CircaSsian walnut. Mrs.
Midgely's room, smaller still, and, it
must be admitted, darker still, had no
window at all, but practical skylight.
For this suite, furnished, the Nor
leys paid the sum Of eight thousand
dollars year. That meant that Mrs.
Midgely prepared the three breakfasts
in the bathroom, over an electric ring,
low Tn , oh oil
som to keep the coffee smell from per-
colating into the corridors, thus in
dieting them for violation of the "NO
Cooking in Rooms" rule. Lunch Mrs.
Midgely and Eleanor took in small
cafeteria two or three blocks away
from the hotel. At evening the three
Of them, mother, daughter and son-in-
law, emerged quite grandly down into
the main dining room of the hotel for
a table d'hote dinner that began with
an elaborate appetizer and marched
on through soup, fish, fowl and des-
sert to finale of bridge in the lobby,
a motion picture or, occasionally, a
theater.
Mrs. Midgely did not play cards, but
even with her daughter and sOn-in-
law much in demand for that pastime,
evenings in the hotel were seldom te-
dious. There were women Of Mrs.
Midgely's own age-many Of them
similarly situated or living on in
comes of their Own-tO talk with, to
say nothing Of odds and ends of elder
ly men, eager to pass the time of day
or night.
Sweet girl, Eleanor! And Spencer,
too, was all that could be desired in
q son-in-law. To be sure, he was
sometimes little abrupt when things
that had to do with business were on
his mind Mrs. Midgely sometimes
suspected he came home with Whit
of liquor ON his breath. But, in the
main, he was kind, good fellow,
highly tolerant Of the fact that from
the first day Of her marriage Eleanor
had been numbered with the presence
of third person. And Eleanor was
in love and in a perpetual state of
bedazzlement over the change of for
tune which had hurled her from the
life of the small farm in Connecticut
to the apartment hotel where exist
ence was fabricated and moved for
ward easily, even luxuriously.
If it bewildered Mrs. Midgely to find
herself sometimes sitting the day
through like well-fed, sleepy dog on
the upholstered chairs of their apart
ment or on the upholstered divans Of
the Hobbies, she knew that the mere
thought was an ungrateful one. Mrs.
Midgely's hands, even though they
were manicured now by the blond girl
in the hotel beauty parlOr, still bore
traces of the manual labor they had
done in those years when she was
struggling to rear Eleanor.
1t seemed sacrilegious to regard the
sitting about as tedium. Eleanor did
not She was another girl. Her bright