Montana oil and mining journal. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1931-1953, 1937-01-30
One Evenings Adventure
With a Poet Sends a Little
WallflOwer Skyrocketing
to Romance.

w VHEN CECILIA BcKitten
came home from one Of the
NM few parties she had ever
been invited TO and told her
sister "Elsie May, 1 have
found my fate at last" Elsie May felt
skeptical and alarmed. For IL was a
sad fact that, although CeciIla's faith
er was professor of romance languages
at q mems. college within committing
reached her 18th year with no expert
ence of romance beyond the faithful
reading of her fathers books and the
dramatizing Of their somewhat old
fashioned ideas In what she called her
minds eye.
one reason for Cecilias unpopularity
with young men was her appearance,
which in general resembled a Rhode
Island Red chicken at the pin-feather
period. She had flaming hair a sharp,
eager jawbone and face the good
lines of which were practically obscured
by freckles and the jerky manner in
which she moved her bones. These
things might have been assets if she
had chosen to make her style crisp and
audacious, but instead she wore drip
PLY ruffled clothes to satisfy her own
idea of a romantic figure. She had no
mother to combat such fancieS, only
Elsie May who, after all, was younger.
do you mean to say" Elsie May
said, that you were sitting out wall
Towering, with nobody paying you any
attention and he just gazed at you and
fell and came over?"
Gas I have told you" said Cecilia,
1T is not as If Jim Delano were the
kind to talk to a WallfloWer out Of chiV-
airy. No, he is the sincere, grim type
who win not speak to a girl unless he
is grimly and sincerely drawn; and he
hardly spoke even thenl"
do you mean" said Elsie May in a
strained voice, that he lust came and
sat beside you like a tree or some
thing2"
Like black panther" said Cecilia.
"And I told him how you and I used
TO watch him weaving down the foot
ball field while thousands cheered, and
he listened with thrillingly inscrut-
able expression. Oh, Elsie Mayl He
looks cloSed-in and mysterious like the
battlements of a castle"
Did he make date?" said Elsie
May
HE did not need to-" said Cecilia.
we are next to meet at the reception
given for Duncan O'Reilly. You know,
the Irish poet who is coming to lecture
at the university"
oh" said Elsie May with a faint
hope; did he ask you if you we're
gong TO De CQereF
Wei, not, exactly; asked him, but
1t came to the same. He said, oh,
are you going to that thing? So am
T. sort of casually; as If he had not
made up his mind to go when he
knew would be there when, of course,
he had. For Jim Delano was not the
type, Elsie May, who would be COM
ing way out from New York now he
Is no longer in College to attend a
great driving force behind It'll"
Cecilia saw Jim as soon as she came
into the college assembly hall on the
arm Of her father, who had gladly |
volunteered to be her escort.
Professor McKitten was q little man |
with q short white beard and mild |
blue eyes that seemed content to live (,
sheltered behind their glasses. He con-
sidered Cecilia a being unique Of her |
kind and bound to be adOred for her |
uniqueness. Her temporary lack Of |
adorers he interpreted as q sign that |
she was being reserved for some great |
destiny, and tonight he expected her |
to capture the celebrity OF the evening.
fathers small brave form to disappear |
through pressing phalanges before |
approaching the corner where her !
hero stood.
jim Delano was still smarting from !
an ominous encounter with Elijah |
Pyncheon, senior partner of the Wall |
Street firm of Pyncheon and Kidd, |
which had given Jim post two years |
ago when his graduating class had |
voted him the man most likely to !
succeed after college and regretted 1t |
ever since Elijah had asked Jim to |
attend the ORetlly reception in order |
that Jim might be glamorous for some |
clients. But when Elijah |
had arrived he found Jim cloSeted In |
an anteroom with some of the more |
raffish elements of the party, making |
bets about such non-cuStomer 's-man |
concerns as to whether or not the Irish |