Evening Star Newspaper, March 6, 1932, Page 82

THE SUNDAY STAR, WA AS PANTS THE HEART i siny oo 1 This Is One of The Star Magazine’s First- Run Stories by a New Writer—And It Is a Story That Will Keep You Guessing to the Very Last IWord. // UT your foot down, my boy! Why, if you let your wife boss you tne first year you are married you'll never,” asseverated Wiswell Holden, ‘dare call your soul your own.” “I believe you're right,” Georg: Gorham pulled discontentedly on his new sanitary pipe. “Give a woman an inch——" “And che’ll wear the pants! Not in my house, George. Mrs. Holden knows who's the head of our house. She wouldn't dare select my ties or my pipes. She knows exactly how far she can go. I began right.” “Mrs. Gorham is the swectest little woman in the ) She was thinking of my health when e monstrosity with the washable . Ugh! It simply won't draw.” George stuiled the offensive thing in kis pocket. The train, he noted, lowering his voice, was slewing down. “Say, Wis, is your wife jeal- ous?” “Jealous? All women are jealous! It's Polly’s only fault. Why, that girl is so gaga over me she gets positively green-eyed when I kiss my great-aunt! Jealous? I'll say! Not that she has any cause,” the older man amended, as the train came to a full stop. Tre two commuters sprinted up the hill toward their neighboring homes. The Holden bungalow came first, with its inviting rear garden of freshly turned rich soil. Wis could hardly wait to eat his dinner, so anxious was he to set out baby zinnias before dark. He dashed upstairs, leaving his strawberry short- cake half-finished, to change into garden togs. “Polly, where are my white flannel pants?” he called. “Darling,” demurred his wife sweetly, “you're never going to wear those leprous old things again.” “Well, who's going to stop me?” “You know,” Polly evaded, “I threatened to dispose of them last Summer, after Nora re- fused to wash them in the washing machine.” “Yeah. Cost me two dollars to get 'em steam cleaned at the tailor's.” “If you realized how perfectly ridiculous you look, since they shrank so, you wouldn't be seen with them on, even in the garden. I'm ashamed to death before the neighbors.” “Hang the neighbors! I'll wear what I please. Trot ’em out, Polly. I want to transplant those zinnias before dark.” Polly Holden repressed a smile. “Not in those awful pants, dear.” The little devil. He'd like to shake her. She went too far—hiding his clothes. Dictat- ing what he should wear. Things had come to a pretty pass. Was he master in his own house or wasn't he? She was getting just like young Gorham's wife. “Hurry up,” he tried to keep himself in check. *“I want my “If ever you expect,” Polly surveyed the chaos he’d made of the closet, “to wear any of those clothes again, you'd better pick them up and put them up and put them back on the hang- ers.” Wis watched his wife walk coolly away. Boiling, he donned a pair of golf knickers and stepped over a pile of garments. OR a hectic 20 minutes he ignored Polly, working feverishly at his zinnias. Then his outraged feelings got the better of him. “You—you didn’t sell those white flannels to an old clothes man, did you.” “Sell them!” Polly laughed. *“Impossible, unless to a blind man! Splotchy, yellow-gray, shrunk-like-a-board old things!” “Nor give 'em to the Near East Relief?” | *Guess again.” | *Salvation Army?” “You're getting warmer; but you're all wet, Wis. I'd be ashamed to offer them to—Sh! Here comes George Gorham. Good evening, Mr. Gorham. Nice evening, isn't it?” George's long shanks halted beside his kneel- ing neighbor. “Evening, Mrs. Holden. ’Lo, ‘Wis. Working in your garden?” “Naw. Playing squat tag. C’'m on over and squat.” Wis shoved a trowel and hand culti- vator from a rustic bench. “No, thanks. Too many mosquitoes. I came over to borrow a golf club. Want to try out & new stroke, but when I went to get my fa- vorite niblick I found my wife thought it too wabbly to be respectable and had sent it to that confounded rummage sale they're having tomorrow night.” “Ha! Rummage sale!” Wis glared at his wife, who only giggled. He went back into the house, to return presently with his bag of golf sticks which he handed his neighbor. And there stood Polly, actually grinning at him. He could scarcely wait till Gorham ambled away to accuse her. “You had no right to steal my pants, Polly.” “You're tearing that root, dear.” She stopped to mold the earth firmly about a larkspur shoot. “Don’t ycu know a wife can't steal from her own husband?” “I know one who can't! You get those pants back.” “What a fine howdy-do you'rr making over @2 old p2ir of pants!” “I'm not making a do-dy-how! It's a mat- ter of principle with me!” “Well, it's a matter of principle with me, too. You can't go around looking like a street cleaner——" “Oh, can't I!” He hadn't meant just that, he realized. “I'll go around looking as I please. And you, Polly, get those pants back before that rummage sale begins, or else I will! I mean it.” His tone held all the calm of the suppressed fury before a thunder storm. “I didn’t say I put them in the rummage sale,” mollified his wife. “But if I did, how do vou s’pose I'd know which bundle they were in? We're selling everything done up this year, like grabs. They go faster, Sally Merrill says. I did up my things with last year's Christmas ribbon—red bows catch the eye. Why don’t you come to the sale yourself, Wis?"” “And buy back my own pants?” “Why not? Many's the chocolate cake I've made for a church fair and paid 85 cents for afterwards. Do it for the good of the cause.” “Cause be damned! It's cause I'm talking about. My cause. Hand me that box of seed- lings, will you? Have I any rights or haven't I? A man can’'t possess his own soul without having a woman send it to the heathen. It's the principle—" Mrs. Holden escaped out of earshot. She knew very well when her husband began on the principle of anything he'd never let up. Once in the kitchen it struck her as funny and she began to laugh. Her laughter floated through the open win- dow where it reached her better half with the soothing effect of a red rag waved in front of a bull. Laugh at him, would she! Here was something more important than nursing baby zinnias. Rising stiffly, he stalked over to Gor- ham'’s side yard, where George was still putting at an invisible hole in the gathering dusk. “’Lo, Wis. Watch me. I hold it like this!” George's eagerness to display his indifferent stroke struck Holden's amused ears. Then something else struck him. Clack! Ping! “Ouch!” he bellowed, caressing an indignant tibia. “Sorry,” apologized the golfer. “Getting too dark to play anyway. Light up, Gorham, and help drive away these mosqui- toes.” Wiswell sat down on the steps. EORGE struck match after match in vain attempt to light his new pipe. Wis, not- ing the look of frustration on the young man'’s face in the glare, silently handed him a cig- arette. “Thanks, Mr. Holden. I'd cut them out, but I guess Grace’s driven me to it.” “’S a wonder our wives don't drive us all to drink—giving away our clubs and our pants!” And Wis related his latest grievance. “But I thought,” George bantered, “your wife wouldn’t dare. You began right!” “I—I did, but she’s probably learned it from your wife, George. By thunder, we've got to put a stop to this! We've got to show those women who’s boss. There was that hat of mine last Spring. What if I had cut the crown off to keep my head cool? What if it was five or six years old? I liked it. And she—what did she do—go and put it in the Morgan Me- morial bag! Did she ask me?” “She did not! She took my niblick! You're perfectly right, Wis, we've got to—umph!” In his ex- citement George had stuck the business end of his cigarette in his mouth. “Can’t we do something ?” “Now you've said it! Why don’t we slip down to the hall where this shindig is going to be held and get our things back? I guess that would show those girls a thing or two.” “But we can’t break in. Suppose a cop sees us?” “Who said anything about breaking in? The hall is upstairs and I'm no second-story man. We can find the janitor, can’t we, and explain things to him. If he’s a married man he’ll understand and help us.” “If he isn’t,” hinted George, “there are ways of making him forget whatever happens.” “Exactly.” ' “I'd give a dollar to get back that hmeer- schaum,” Gorham tossed his cigarette on the lawn and ground it with his heel. “Grace admits she sent all my old pipes to the sale.” For several minutes ways and means were discussed in subdued tones. “What I'm wondering about,” the bridegroom went on, “is how we're going to explain the things we get back to our wives.” “Ezplain nothing! When you've been mar- ried as long as I have, my boy, you'll learn that explaining to women is worse than lying— . they tangle you up so. Truth? Bah! They won't believe it! Safer to tell 'em nothing.” “I'm beginning to think you're right.” “Course I'm right! If my wife thinks she can get away with my pants she’s got another guess.” Wis stood up. “C’'m on,” he said. “Let’s go.” Twelve hollow tones boomed from the town clock before the conspirators reached their homes again. Sorority Hall boasted no resident janitor. After a few inquiries they found his Ex-Kaiser Happy in Exile at Doorn Continued from Fifth Page really is difficult to have patience with him after what he wrote about Russia the other day.” How happy a union her marriage with the ex-Kaiser has proved! When the marriage took place it was much criticized in Germany on the ground not only of the difference in their ages, but also of this, his second wife, not being of the high rank of his first wife, the Empress Victoria Augusta. It seems that even the Ger- mans wished to see their old Emperor fittingly mated. But the Empress Hermine is of royal birth, having been the widow of a former prince, and the ex-Kaiser says she has made him very happy in his exile. He has even gone so far as to say she has saved his reason. She spoke of him often to me as a good man much maligned, and confessed him to be a model hus- band and a kind stepfather to her children by her first marriage, as devoted to her and them as he was to his first wife and children. “In Germany,” she said, “they were to the last proud of their Emperor's clean, upright life, no less than of his high sense of duty to the Fatherland.” “Harking back to Dean Inge,” said the Kaiser suddenly, “I am a great admirer of his, you know. I read all his works, and we corre- spond.” The ex-Kaiser is still the stanch religionist that he was when, as King of Prussia, he was summus episcopus of the Lutheran Church “I have followed the fortunes of the Revised Prayer Book for the Church of England with interest,” he ebserved. “The British Parliament did quite right in rejecting it. I wonder will it ever be legalized?” HE Kaiser went on to refer to his “grand- mamma,” the late Queen Victoria, whose memory he cherishes with great affection, and also mentioned the Duke of Connaught. He would never speak of King Edward VII, whose nature was the very opposite of his own and with whom he could seldom agree. Never were uncle and nephew more unlike. King Edward read few books and those few mainly con- cerned gort, while the Kaiser has always been a acious reader, with an especial lean- ing to historical and theological. Their habits, #o0, were singularly different, as the former Kaiser is not a devotee of sport, plays no games and does not care for cards. Over coffee he made another confession. “I never smoke a pipe nor cigars, Thomas, but”— accepting a cigarette from the case I handed across to him—*like Hindenburg, I do enjoy an occasional cigarette!” Our talk was chiefly of Palestine, where we first met on the occasion of his memorable pilgrimage with the Empress. The Kaiser has the dual gift of being an attentive and sym- pathetic listener as well as a fluent speaker. As I had been to Palestine since that time, he asked many questions, which I did my best to answer adequately. After luncheon the Empress Hermine took me to a building in the beautiful grounds of Doorn House, where a bazaar was being pre- pared for a local charity. The bazaar was to open on Monday. This was Saturday, but I was allowed to make Burchases and obtained a fine terra-cotta bust of the Kaiser. house, down near the depot settlement. Mike had gone to play pool, his wife said should have been easy; there weren't places for Mike to play pool in Hope But he wasn't playing pool. After a couy wild goose chases up to-Joe's Wagonette a end of the town and down to an auto at the other, they found him, garralous geod natured, at the corner drug store, was so sympathetic he wept, especially a feel of the crisp greenback in his palm. jiffy he had lighted up the little hall and them to help themselves. George Gorham found a lengthy, stickish looking package almost at once. well Holden’s agile eye was spying out mas bows. Not that one on the cand too small. But, ah, that one right In the dle of the pile on the center table! It w: only other red bow in sight and the size box was right. He pounced upon it righteous grunt, while the janitor, nervous, told them to hurry up before som came and made him lose his job...His Why, if they were caught they'd be the I ing stock of the whole town! They dare stop to undo their finds. It wasn’t so easy to locate George's Wis helped him search. They shook b after bundle for the rattling, and sniffed gerly for the fragrance of the meerscl Presently George gave a delightful squeal. got it! I'd recognize that odor anywheq “Beat it!” hissed the janitor. “I hear one coming.” Pell mell they raced down the back into the cool night air. At the Holden b low they parted in high glee. They'd those girls! OLLY was already asleep. Wis crept in bed in the dark In order not to d her, but first he tore the guilty red bow his parcel which he laid on the little between them. The bow he hid in his p3 pocket. He chuckled to think how sury Polly would be in the morning. But the surprise was on the other foot! “Wiswell Gladstone Holden, where,” he his wife shriek, “did you get these?” Opening one sleepy eye, he beheld Polly gling a pink corselette in his face. T garters writhed grotesquely like silver to: snakes. “After the way I've always trusted you! you deceitful wretch!” wailed his irate sj “How could you?” Her eyes glinted gr In a flash they placed the tell-tale red sticking out of Wis’ pocket. “B-b-b-ut, honey, I can explain——" “No, you can’t; I don’t want to hear Polly fiung into the bathroom and lock door. Easily she surmised where that ( had come from. Weakly she leaned a the door to make her laughter sound like “But listen, honey,” Wis cajoled throug] door. “I can explain everything.” He one time, he reflected, explanations order. Tell ’em nothing and they'd tr rough. “Listen, honey- B Mrs. Holden turned on all the faucd drown him out. “I—I got it at the rummage sale, d he knew how futile he sounded. “You ea George.” Polly was off again. “That awful G Gorham! I know they say terrible things him but I thought my husband was diffd Men are all alike. Go away. Go awa never want to see you again.” She did not come down to breakfast. were no cheek-pecking kisses nor admoni to wear his rubbers, though it was raining yvhen he started for the station. An jealous rampage. How he hated them! For once he tried to evade George Go