The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1935-11-01
Just Another One of DUNGEONS Yarns By Eleanor Abbott

Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate,
Incorporated
Copyright: 1885: By ELEANOR HALLowEIL
ABBOTT
QN TWO PARTS-PART ONE)
YOU MAY LAUGH UNBELIEvINGLY,
\ AS DID DUNGEONS WIFE, OR
YOU MAY WEEP AT THE TALES
OF HIS HIGH ADVENTURES
THE GREATEST OF WHICH
WAS UNKNOWN TO HIM.
Approaching fully the advantages as
well as the disadvantages of his wife's
popularity, AthOl Duncon must yet
have commended to the day of his death
that there ought to be some one in the
world in a position to understand, or
even explain if necessary, the unac-
countable adventures which were con-
stantly assailing him.
Duncon certainly did not look like
an adventuring man. He was smallish
and none too brightly colored. His hair
indeed was distinctly drab. His eyes
were pale. His voice was mild. His
manner, almost deprecatory.
Yet, practically never did he set
foot beyond the confines of his home
without stepping right into adventure,
even if that adventure proved no more
than falling down an empty well, or
being invited to go to the circus with
perfect strangers, or arriving at the
finding himself pictured in the morning
paper as the affianced lover of a Ru-
manian princess whom he had never
laid eyes on till the day before when
pre-SuppOSing her to be no more, no
less, than any other bewildered for
eigner lost for the moment in a gigantic
railroad station, he had ushered her
back, infinitely to his own astonish-
ment, to a distracted retinue Of gold
braided courtiers and cavaliers.
Duncon's wife. on the contrary, had
never met an adventure in her life, ex-
cept Duncon himself, and did not even
recognize him as that.
It wasn't, you understand, that Mrs.
Duncon disapproved of adventures.
She simply didn't credit them. That
was all.
To a woman of her particular trend
of mind. it was indeed as though the
whole world and Duncon himself not
only ended but began at the latch of
the white picket gate which enclosed
her W peaceful garden and pleasant,
we'll ordered house. Inside that domain
Duncon figured if not exactly as a
king, at least as a crown prince. Out
side that domain he simply didn't ex-
ist. Through the widest flights of
Imagination, apparently, she saw him
only as a hard working, rather lovable
chap who earned a substantial salary
with a big wooden concern, which salary
he sometimes augmented greatly to
their advantage by trips for the firm
through the western states or even to
far foreign countries.
Without worry, without concern,
without even a normal human interest.
| she watched him thus at each fresh
departure merge from a living man into
a wrath, even as in due time he re-
turned again from the shadows into the
who cared a good deal what he was
going to have for supper or would prob
ably have for breakfast.
That Mrs. DuncOn was a pretty Wom-
an, absolutely faithful, reasonably good
natured, and an excellent manager OF
both house and servants, compensated
to some extent, of course, for such quail
| ity as she lacked. But Duncon himself
never failed to be surprised, I judge,
! and a little bit bewildered, that con-
| sidering all existing circumstances he
had married a wife who wasn't even
| civilly curious about this strange be-
which fate had so thrust upon him.
It was, I should imagine. in about
the third year Of their married life that
my husband and I first stumbled on
this phenomenon of his wife'S !ndif-
ference to these adventures.
Through a slight favor which my
| husband had been able to render
through his law office, and a subsequent
though somewhat superficial associa-
| ton on various committees at the coun-
try club, the two men had already es-
tablished an affable If not intimate
acquaintance. It thus remained for the
two wives. who were not yet acquainted
at all, to domesticate the situation by a
| purely social overture of some sort.
BY chance it was Mrs. Duncon and
| not I who made this overture first. The
occasion was dinner, the invitation
rather unnecessarily formal. All the
appointments of the table, candle light
silver, linen, the viands themselves,
| though frankly simple were almost per-
functorily correct.
It was, therefore, a little unfortunate
perhaps that Duncon himself, as host
of so studied and conscious an occasion
should not have arrived home until we,
after having waited what seemed an
interminable time for him. were at least
half through the meal. 1t being. how
ever, a poor laggard who cannot win
reasonably prompt absolution for him
self if only his excuse is interesting
enough. the whole situation might well
have been saved even then by the mere
suggestiveness of his excited face and
twisted necktie. if Mrs. Duncon, though
| showing commendable patience with
the delinquencies themselves. had not
frustrated utterly every attempt on his
part to explain or atone for the same.