Evening Star Newspaper, July 12, 1931, Page 74

Y TR -, - == THE SUNDAY STAR, WA = —_ IN A SILVER FRAME —_7uwther Story of the The Last of a Series of Four Complete Stories —And You lWill Be Interested in the Various Entertaining Foents That Befell 1 hen ““Old Sloppy 1 cather Mush Turpic” Became Eddie Bullfinch’s Unzeelcome Guest. Y friend, Mr. Masscy, had driven over from his Summer cottage at Marys Neck to smok2 an afternoon cigar with me on my veranda above the sea at Cobble Reef. The manner of his ar- vival was pleasant. He desccnded from a fine fawn-colored runabout driven by a dark-eyed, pretty girl ¢f 21 or 22, who seemad to take it as entirely a matter of course that three young men of similer age should have squeezed themselves into the rumble seat. All three scrambled to take the plice at her side va- cat:d by Mr. Massey; muscular force was in- volved and she used scme of this herself to settle the contest. When two had been established beside her and the cther forced to retire to the rumble, she leaned back, pzttd the defeated one upon a tousled head, then ca2lled to Mr. Massey that she would return for him later, and, settling herself to the controls of her livcly machine, whizzed away down the white road that crosses the sait marshes and leads to Marys Neck. Frcm his chair on my veranda, Mr. Massey a little anxiously observid the speed of her departure, but sighed resignedly and almost at once began one of those homely narratives of his that I find most instructive when least interrupted. So I never interrupt him. That one was Clarissa (Mr. Massey said), and pretty much any time you'd happen to see her it would be about the same way—dashing off somewhere else with three or four of ‘em hanging on as well as they could. As a mat- ter of fact, it seems to Mrs. Massey and me that about all we get during our Summers at Marys Neck is just glimpses of both our daughters. They're in and out, mostly out, and when they do stay home, if Mrs. Massey and I are in the living room, Clarissa and Enid and their friends take the front porch, and if we're out there they take to the living room. Yet I don't mean to say that those two girls are alike; there's all the difference in the world betwecn ‘em. Clarissa’'s more experienced sociably and more of a general belle, you might say. She seems to know how to keep her aflections kind of scattered around usually, and her mother and I have about quit fretting when she does appear to let 'em get centered upon one object for a while, because we've found it never lasts long or interferes much with her eating or any- thing while it's occurring. LARISSA just goes on having a good time all the time, but Enid, who is a couple of years younger, has always had a more severe nature, as you might call it—you'd hardly know she's Clarissa's sister. She's every bit as good looking as Clarissa, but light-haired and less given to sentiment and frivolity. She's always been called the intellectual one, being artistic and reading more than most of us do about serious matters, such as evolution and people like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. She dances every bit as well as Clarissa does, though, and it wouldn’'t be possible to dress any tastilier—she’s never had any lack of partners to take her pick of—but a mighty principal difference between the two used to be that she never had the faintest glimmer of any suscep- tibility to the boys. What's more, when they showed signs of sus- ceptibility toward herself she just couldn't stand it, and when we first began coming to Marys Neck she made Eddie Bullfinch's life pretty miserable on that account. For quite a while he couldn't get it into his head that any symptoms of susceptibility on his part ap- peared to her as actual sampies of mental do- fectiveness and yet kept her from feeling the tolerance she’'d have shown to a patient in such an institution as she said ought to have charge of him. She was the same way with any other boys that showed susceptibility. She'd get so angry and so ccntemptuous that she'd pretty well drive them off, and if they still hung around she wouldn't have anything to do with them. But Eddie Bullfinch and she finally got into the habit of quarreling about two-thirds of the time, and this seemed to suit her all right. They spent most of their time together, even when they weren't speaking. To me Eddie Bullfinch is kind of an inter- esting character, though it took me a couple 6f Summers to get accustomed to him. He's a boy that hasn't widened out any as he got taller and older, and the nose he had on him Quring his childhood is still just the way it was, not grown up to the rest of his face. He has sandyish hair that he seems to try hard to plaster backward in a fashionable manner, but without keeping part of it from ruckling up on top toward the rear of his head, and he doesn’t appear able to wear white trousers that hold their shape any to speak of, or to get the white parts of his rubber-soled shoes more than fairly grayish. He likes to tinker up any old worn out machincry he can lay his hands on and to trade around, for instance, with a couple of junked motoreycles till he gets hold of the engine of a racing automobile, mayb2, which he’s liable to put into a pretty cranky dory and call it a motor boat. Naturally, Mrs. Massey and I never felt free from anxiety when Enid was with him, but, of course, Enid herself, being at the age when noise and excitement are pleasurable, enjoyed his experiTents, and that's probably the main reason why such an intellectual girl got in the habit of standing =0 much of Eddie's compan- ionship. Right at the opening of this present season Eddie did something like what I've just been telling you he’s lMable to do. He owns an old sailboat about 20 feet long and he got his father's chauffeur to help him put two junked automobile engines into it—sald he thought he could get up some real speed with a twin- screw arrangement—and Mrs. Massey and I spent some nervous hours on our front porch with a spyglass watching that boat flop around with Enid in it out on the Atlantic Ocean. Usually they'd have to get towed in by a fisherman or somebody because Eddie'd taken out the mast and sails. Bui one afternoon the contraption got to working right well, as I saw myself through the spyglass. It didn%t get up any speed particularly, but it did splash along for quite a little while withdut stopping, and Eddie was able to get it going again every time it broke down, so they actually came back into the harbor under their own power. Eddie seemed to regard this as quite a triumph. He brought Enid up to our cottage in the infants’ bathtub he called the “side-car” of his patched- up maqtorcycle and told me he guessed he'd showed a few people what was what. “They all said I couldn't do it,” he told me, while Enid was in the house changing her dress, which was pretty wet. “A lot o' people around here thought they were going to have a chance to laugh at the Shooting Star, but I guess today showed ‘em!” “Shooting Star?” I asked him. “That's the new name of my boat,” he said. “Her original name was the Mrs. Calvin M. Flick when I bought her from a fisherman, but it didn't look right painted on a twin-screw motor boat. Some of ‘'em think they can laugh at me yet for naming her the Shooting Star, but wait till I get those engines tuned up just right!” “About how much time will it take you to get 'em tuned up the way you want ‘'em?” I asked him, just not to let the conversation flag, and I was rather surprised when the question seemed to have a depressing effect upon him. He looked gloomy, made curious sounds in his throat and tried to scratch a place on his back that he couldn't get at. “Why, dog-gone it!” he said. “I'd have those little hummers tuned up absolutely within the next four or five days if that wet splash wasn’t coming to visit me.” “What's coming to visit you?” I asked him, though he seemed to think I'd comprehend Aim without his xplaining. “Mush, Sloppy Weather,” he said. *OM Sloppy Weather Mush Turpie. Sloppiest weather I ever had anything to do with any- where.” “You mean it's & person, Eddie?” “Why, yes,” he said, looking surprised. “Any- how, he thinks he is. It's a fellow named Mushmelon Turpie; at least, that's the name we had for him at school. What he's got on his calling cards is ‘Mr. Lathrop Mallowfield Tur- pie’ His mother calls him ‘Mallie;/ and my mother says I've got to begin now and call him that, too, instead of ‘Mushmelon,’ because he always hated being named ‘Mushmelon’ ter- ribly, his mother wrote to my mother, and it'd be disgraceful to make my own visitor uncom- fortable. That’s the position my whole family take—that just because he's my age and I went to school with him he’'s supposed to be coming here to visit me—when I would»’’. have asked him myself in a thousand yeew, and would a good deal rather have some animal or something visit me.” DDIE spoke with such bitterness that I got a little interested. “But if you feel so un- congenially toward this young Mr. Turpie I don’t see how it happens he's to be your guest.” “My guest!” Eddie said. “Why that's just what I've been explaining he isn’t! Only he’s going to think he is and my family keep in- sisting and pecking at me, and I'll have to drag him around with me« and entertain him and everything, or his mother’s feelingsll be hurt. She's my mother's most intimate old girlhood friend and she wgs getting afraid his mother’s feelings’d be hurt about our never having invited him here, except once five years ago; so my mother wrote and asked him to visit me without telling me anything about it before- hand or giving me the slightest chance to argue or anything.” y - “But won't he be interested in helping you tune those engines up?” I inquired. “Can’t you take him on as a mate or something of the Shooting Star?” “Who? Mushmeion?” Eddie said, staring at me. “Why I wouldn't any more let Mushmelon Turpie touch those little hummers than I would some camel. He can't do anything on earth except smoke somebody else's cigarettes all up and call heads or tails :ight so that he always gets into movies at other people's expense. It's going to be an absolutely terrible interference with everything, and one of the worst things about it is the way Enid's going to treat him, because he's the girling kind that just makes her absolutely sick, and she’s already told me not to bring him around here at all. Well, 1if he has to be kept away it means I'll have to stay away with him a good deal, and besides that the family’ll insist that I've got to bring him here anyhow to call, and if I do she's going to get disgusted and prob’ly quit speaking to me again.” He was so dejected about it that I couldn't help laughing, but I tried to cheer him up a little. “Well if she does she's pretty sure to begin again some time,” I told him. “I've noticed she usually does, and anyhow your young friend's visit will be only a temporary obstruction.” “Temporary!” Eddie said. “The last time he visited us he was only about 14 years old, but he stayed six weeks.” Enid came down just then in a dry dress and they whirled away somewhere, leaving me a good deal amused over Eddie Bullfinch's troubles and also kind of faintly curious to see the cause of them, wondering a little bit what this Mushmelon boy, Mr. Lathrop Mallowfield Tur- pie, looked like. It was about a week before I found out. Mrs. Massey and I were sitting on the porch in the bright twilight after dinner. Clarissa wasn't home and Enid was inside reading in the living room, when Eddie came up the porch steps with another boy and said nervously, “Mr. and Mrs. Massey, this is my friend Mush—I mean Mallowfield—I mean Mallowfield Turpie. Where's Enid?” It's cutious and unreasonable the way we all feel -kind of an objection to people, some- times, at first sight, but those two boys hadn't any more than reached the top of the steps before I was in complete sympathy with Eddie Bullfinch's prejudices in regard to his visitor. That Turpie boy was kind of handsome in a pear-shaped way. I mean his face was fattish at the base, so his head looked smaller, and he had thin, blondish hair that he didn't seem to mind having curl some around his forehead. His complexion was pale and dampish-looking. He had a pink mouth that appeared to be too small, I thought, and too curving, and the expression on it was what you might call com- placent. That is to say, he struck me as looking like an only child that's never had any trouble believing all his mother has ever said to him about himself. When he saw Mrs. Massey and me sitting on the porch and while Eddie Bull- finch was introducing him he put on one of those stony, repellant looks, like an aristocratic beauty suspecting insult, only more so—the way some boys do to show strangers that the slightest intimacy is going to be unattainable. He didn't say anything—just allowed Mrs. Massey and me to split a slight nod between us, then walked coldly into the house with Eddie. From outside on the porch we couldn't hear much that went on at first in the living room. They were talking fairly quietly, as sometimes young people do for a little while, except at parties, until they get better ac- quainted. After that the Turpie boy seemed to be holding forth at considerable length in a treble voice, and his subject must have been congenial to him, because finally we heard Eddie break in, pretty near shouting, and “Starting with loud, scornful laughter. “What'd I tell 'you, Enid?” he said. “Didn’t I tell you if you ‘ever let him once get talking about himself you couldn't stop him excep) you'd hit his little old nob of a head with sledge hammer? For heaven's sake, Mus change the subject and talk about someth pleasant!” OUNDS of repartee and altercation followed and it seemed to me that in his irritation Eddie was negleciing his family’s instructio upon the proper treatment of a guest. Th we heard Enid speaking sharply to him, an not long after that the three of them came o and got into Enid’s runabout to go somewh and dance. It was dark by that time, but could hear Eddie remonstrating down on thd driveway where the car was waiting: “My goodness! You aren't going to let old Slopp: Weather sit there, are you? Get out o' tha Mush! Get back in the rumble where yo belong!™ There was a sound of scuffiing and Enid spoke angrily: “No! Mr. Turpie is a visitor. Sit in the rumble yourseif!” “What!"” we heard Eddie saying in a plaintiv way. “Me? Well my goodness!” Then they drove off and I certainly felt very much pleased with Enid for her good manners and proper| instincts. “It shows she's a kind-hearted girl,” I told Mrs. Massey. “It shows she's sorry for a boy] as kind of deficient as this one appears to be, and doesn't intend to let Eddie Bullfinch make| the poor thing feel too uncomfortable; though| I must say, judging from his expression, her efforts in that line might be unnecessary. Still, it's altogether to her credit.” I felt even more this way at lunch the ne day when Enid said she thought it might be nice, on account of our knowing the Bullfinch family pretty well, if her mother would let her give a little dinner or something very soon for yvoung Mr. Turpie. Mrs. Massey said she could and I told Enid I thought she was showing a benevolent spirit. “I'm glad to see it,” I told her. “Especially because it proves you're able to stifle your own prejudices, Enid.” She gave me a surprised. frowning look and asked what I meant, so I explained how Eddie'd told me she'd said he mustn't bring the Turpie boy to call on her or anything, and at that she frowned more and spoke with some indignation. “It was before I knew him,” she said. “Eddie gave me a totally mistaken impression.” I was a little mystified by the decided wav she spoke, but I didn't say anything more and didn't think much about thé matter because that was the day I had to leave Marys Neck on a trip out to Illinois to attend a directors’ meeting and look after some other business affairs. Well, sir, the first person I saw when I got home along in the afternoon about a week later was this Lathrop Mallowfield Turpie sit- ting up on the front porch smoking a bent cigarette and evidently waiting for Enid, be- cause she came out in a new dress just as I reached the top of the steps. It struck me right away she was kind of peakid-looking and different, somehow—maybe because of a new way she was wearing her hair. And what seemed a little peculiar and dampening to an affectionate father, she didn't appear to have any realization that I'd been away at all. She just said absent-mindedly, “Mother's up- stairs if you're looking for her,” and trotted off to her runabout with this Turpie boy hold- ing to her elbow and me staring after her pretty well kerlummoxed. I never knew her to act like that before, because she's always made quite a little fuss over me whenever I got back from a trip anywhere. “Is anything wrong with Enid?” I asked Mrs. Masscy after we'd talked a little while upstairs, and she looked peculiar, but said she thought Enid’'s health was all right. “Well, if it isn't her health, what's the matter with her?” I asked, just like that. “I'd prefer for you to come to your own conclusions,” Mrs. Massey told me. "7l