The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1931-02-13
ny
Henry Kitcllel1 Webster
Copyright by The Bobbs- Merrill Co.
wNU Service

by the END or two months Sne cOulQ
write a clean page If she didn't try
to go too fast, and she was taking slow
dictation that Florabel read not from
prepared exercises but out of the
newspaper or anywhere.
Then one day a client appeared at
the desk in the middle Of the lesson.
Rhoda caught up her notebook and
fed, but not very far; only to the
nearest sofa. When the man had fin
ished debating his letters and gone
away she went back to Florabel. ''Let
me see If can't write them from my
notes." she pleaded. "He talked loud
enough for me to hear him, all right,
and know I've got everything"
Florabel had been rather shocked
and she made Rhoda promise not to
do it again, but she did let her tran
scribe her notes on the typewriter and
there were only a few small mistakes.
What they did after that with clients
they knew, was to ask permission for
Rhoda to sit beside the desk and take
the dictation for practice. They were
mostly awfully nice about it.
People were like that, in the main,
according to Rhoda's experience
kindly, glad to help one out Of diff
Guilty if it didn't mean taking much
trouble-and sometimes when it did.
The thing she couldn't understand
was why, they had been so cruel to her
father. He never could have meant,
whatever it was he'd done, to hurt
anybody in the world. Yet as she
remembered with better understanding
some Of the things that had happened
in the last weeks before they left
home to come east, the whole town
must have turned upon him as If he'd
been a leper. They'd broken him,
somehow.
She couldn't believe. any more, that
the happy time he'd used to talk
about-the long holiday when they'd
roam the world doing whatever they
pleased-would ever come. But the
scheme that was to make 1t possible
obsessed him more and more. He al
most never talked to her now; he
didn't even want her to read to him.
And he couldn't be very well, either.
His face had a queer blue color some
times that frightened her. He insisted
it was nothing, and when she found
out, accidentally, that he'd been to see
the doctor who lived in the hotel he
told her 1t was for a touch of indi-
gestion. Florabel was urging her now
to go out and find herself regular
job. She was better fitted for it than
most Of the graduates of the schools,
and as good as she'd ever get until
she'd had some actual business expert
ence. Rhoda wanted to do it, but she
felt she couldn't without telling her
father about the plan before putting
1t in execution.
So she put Florabel off, saying she
would go looking for a job some time,
but that she didn't see that there was
any hurry.
At the end of one Of these conversa-
tons she saw something in her friends
face that made her ask, with a catch
in her breath, 'Is there any special
hurry that you know about?"
Florabel visibly hesitated over her
answer. II sort of hated to tell you,"'
she said. "Why, I'm not going to be
here very much longer. You see, I'm
going to marry Mr.. Gage. You know.
And Of course that means I'm going
to Denver to live. And oh, Lamb, I'd
like to see you settled before !, go!"
Rhoda hated to remember the little
scene that followed. She'd said, in her
hurt bewilderment, some pretty mean
things, about independence and so on,
and she'd made Florabel cry. They'd
made it up, though, within the hour.
She helped Florabel shop and she went
to the wedding and saw the couple
off on the train.
She liked Mr.. Gage, herself. He
was fat, like Florabel, and jolly. He
looked rather solemn, though, when he
said good-by to her. He gave her his
card with his address on it and told
her to keep it carefully If anything
ever happened to her, he said, and she
found she wanted any help, she was to
write or telegraph.
She refrained from asking him what
he thought might happen. OF course
she really knew.
When. about a fortnight later, an
hour after she and her father had
finished their late dinner, the blow fell
she hadn't been surprised at all. She
had had the doctor there within ten
minutes, but she'd known then that it
was too late for his remedies to do
any real good.
The one thing that 1t was unendur-
able to remember and impossible to
forget was the way her father had
pleaded with the doctor for one more
day. He frantically believed that
enough of the drug they were putting
into his veins would give him the little
handful of hours that was all he
needed.
They did give him more stuff out of
the hypodermic syringe, but this time
1t was morphine and under it he re-
Taxed, so that for while he talked
to her. comfortably but confusedly.