Evening Star Newspaper, June 19, 1932, Page 70

HAD just turned Maizie over to the bad who cut in on me, and was cn the way to join the stag line for a few drags, when I lamped this little femme sitting sort ef forlorn by the wall, but trying to look bright, the way they do. Now I'm not ordinarily one of the Rollos of the Rescue Corps, because I'd learned that one Good Deed of that kind sometimes stuck you for an evening, but this kid did not look such a sad lost lamb that it began to seem a per- sonal matter to me. Her dress was the Not Quite kind, and her hair wasn't done up ac- cording tc the latest devices, but she was kinda sweet and I decided to do something about it. So I drilled over to her and said: “How about stepping this one?” She looked up, in the startled fawn manner and said, “I beg your pardon?” A soft voice, but rather deep and rich. “I was asking you if you'd care to dance this with me?” “I'm afraid not,” she said, “you see, I don't know you.” Well, if it was a line it was a fast one. My grandmother told me they used it when she was a girl, but this was 1932, “Oh, don't let that bother you,” I told her, “this is a club dance and we're all just one big family.” “Anyhow,” she said, “you've been drinking.” “I certainly have,” I came back, “and it must have done more to me than I thought, be- cause if I was sober I just wouldn't believe anybody with your ideas existed. So kindly excuse it please, and Good NIGHT!"” So I went away from there. HE little hick! Turning down the one and only Stag at Eve who gave a little doe his attention. What if he had drunk his fill? *Smatter of fact I'd only had a couple fingers of gin. Oh, well, that was absolutely that, and one more of the Younger Generation had re- signed from the Boy Scouts. So by way of positively and completely rub- bing this incident out of my mind, I left Maizie to anybody who wanted to look after her— which meant she wouldn’t starve for compan- jonship—and spent the next hour inquiring around as to whom the prim little prig in the blue dress might be. Nobody in my own crowd had information or ideas, so I began on some of the middle aged ladies who weren’t playing bridge. They sort of passed me from hand to hand for awhile until at last I found out the girl was a small- town niece of Mrs. Busby, who was a bridge bat and chairman of most of the town charities, and who'd let her bridge lust overcome her charity tonight and left the little piece to sit by the wall and spin a pretense of having a good time. 1 didn’t know Mrs. Busby, but my father did, and so if I chose to do anything further about the situation I knew my way from there. About this time Maizie began to miss some- thing and suddenly recalled that it was me, and she and a loud mob of six or eight grabbed me and declared the party was dying on its feet and I was to take the car and go to peppier places. This being my third party in four days I'd planned bed at 1—a job needs some sleep, now and then—but Maizie wouldn’t hear of it. so the night before was the morning after when I got in. Luckily the boss was out of town the next morning, so when I slumped in at 10 o’clock, still only about one-third awake, there was only the stencg in the private office to check up on me. There was plenty work on my own desk and I started in bravely to clear it up. *THE next thing was a telephone ring and as V' I climbed up out of my mental fog T hap- pened to notice it was 11:45 by my desk clock. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 19, 1932 ° S Still the same plenty work on my desk. I'd been asleep in my chair nearly two hours. By evening, however, I was feeling almost human again, and my idea of going to bed at 7 didn’t seem quite so vital to my health and happiness. S0 I began to think of the Little Hick. Well, maybe “began” isn’t the word, for I'd given her some considerable consideration dur- ing a good deal of the day. Kinda sweet, after all, and maybe I had shocked her small soul by bracing up to her that way. The more I thought of it the more I saw how my “good deed” could have seemed cheap masher stuff to her, and how those two shots of gin might have reeked like the breath of the town drunkard in her nostrils. I remembered she had a delicate, pretty nose. So it began to seem important to set myself right with that kid, if she was still in town. Dad’s a good scout, so I outlined the situation to him after dinner. “She sounds refreshing,” said Dad. “And even if she is a hick, as you seem to intimate, I wouldn't like Mrs. Busby's niece telling Mrs. Busby my kid's a souse and a masher. Look— Mrs. B’s been after me for a contribution to her Children’s Fund. I'll send you over with & check and a note. If the girl is still there I guess you can manage the rest.” Well, Mrs. Busby was tickled to get the check, and pleased to meet the son of the con- tributor, and I did look like my father, which I could take as a real compliment, and I really must meet her niece, who is visiting her and hasn’t had time to meet many of the young people yet. So evidently the niece hadn't spilled any- thing about the bird who braced her, or else hadn’t identified me clearly, and if her niece was a little cool, Mrs. Busby probably laid it to her being shy, and after five minutes of what Mrs. B. probably called putting the young folks at their ease, she left us and went upstairs. I said, “I hope you'll let me apologize for last night, Miss Summers. You see our club is sort of informal, and girls don’t usually ex- pect an introduction, and I did want to dance with you. Though I can understand how it might have seemed to you. And honestly I don’t drink to speak of, though I had had a little gin.” “I—I guess I misunderstood, too,” she said in that low voice of hers. Low, but with a kind of rippling brook in it, if you know what I mean. “But I haven't been away from home before, and mother said that though she knew modern girls were informal, and all that, she thought men respected a girl more who was what they used to call a lady, in her day, and she hoped I'd not let eagerness for a good time make me too familiar and—and cheap. But already I'm wondering if mother hasn't been out of things so long she is old-fashioned and——" “Your mother,” I said casually tossing away ‘And I took the platter of chicken and smashed it on the floor . . . and I jumped up and yelled . . . “I'm fed! I'm a playboy, I am, and it’s about time you learned it!” all my former ideas and opinions in one large gesture, “is right. You go right on being a lady and let these other frills ramp around necking everybody in sight. You'd be surprised how tired half us fellows are of the hey hey and hot cha cha type we run with. “Once the mob discovers how nice and sw— quiet and charming you are, you'll have beaux in flocks. Which wouldn't suit me at all. So I'm going to try to see that it doesn’t happen by filling up all your time. “Honestly, you wouldn't lose much fun by it—I'm about as good a sample of the youth of Colliston as anybody else.” s “Well,” she looked up at me with a shy little smile, “I don’t know as I'd mind. I did want to dance with you last night. But do you think a ‘real lady’ would go around with & man who was engaged to somebody else?” “If you mean Maizie Scudder,” I said, she's been the current girl friend—and nothing more. If I had any momentary ideas of eventual marriage, they evaporated—though I didn't know it just then—when I first saw you last night. Will you go to the movie with me tonight?” “I'd like to very much,” she said. T was a happy week. How I did eat up the sleep I got! In the hay by 11 every night. And it wasn't all my idea, by any means—I'd have kept her out a lot later than that, regularly. But she wouldn't have it. She’d gathered from some of my remarks how I'd been traveling. So when we came out of the movie and I suggested we take a little ride and get a bite of something afterwards she said no. “I'd love to,” she said. “And even if mother wouldn't think I ought to, d go. But you look tired, and you are tired. And I dont think a lady ought to keep a gentleman up when he has a job to look after. So you go home and go to bed.” And it was that way all week. We went to movies and danced a little after dinner at the Madison Hotel a couple of times—but there were no late parties. Which really suited me down to the ground because I had been headed for the jitters. The boss seemed slightly surprised when I asked him, but said he gussed I could have my vacation now as well as next month. My work had picked up so the last week that it would be a vacation instead of the can he'd about decided to tie to me. So I caught the 1:10 for Merrivale, and Jane Summers and I came back from the honey- moon trip two weeks later. I was happy. And there didn't seem to be any particular sorrows troubling Jane, either. We eased along quiet and restful for some sev- eral months without a rift in the lute, which played “Home, Sweet Home,” mostly. Jane made a real old-fashioned home for us, and she sure did shine as lady of the house. Some of the old crowd barged around now and then, and she was nice to them, {00, but some- how or other their wise-cracking and jazzy stuff sort of died cold in the cozy little home— and they didn’t get a habit of coming again. S0 we gradually dropped out of the dizzy current of life among the younger set, and picked up with a more mature outfit. Then one evening at dinner Jane made a perfectly harmiess little remark about somebody being “so ladylike and genteel”—quotation marks understood, and I took the platter of chicken I was carving and smashed it on the floor. And I jumped up and yelled: “I'm fed! I'm going out and get pie-eyed. Then maybe I can go to a party and have a good time instead of sticking at home every gosh blasted minute and wallowing in this ding busted contentment and peace. I'm a playboy, I am, and #t’s about time you learned it, once and for all. “And when I come back—if I ever do come back—the word ‘lady’ or ‘gentleman’ in this house will be the signal for murder.” With which gentle remarks I left my goggle- Proving that these quiet -little girls are not always as innocent as they look ND when I was going my strongest, Mazie Scudder blew in to the party. Maizie was exhilarated, and when she lamped me doing a snake dance in a corner of the buffet with one of the livelier debs, she caromed over, gave I knew that old home week couldn’t last forever.” Which was a fine time to have Jane show up at the party—but there she was, looking sort of mad and panicky and determined and whatnot, and prettier than I'd ever seen her before. She came across the floor and grabbed me by the arm. “You march!” she said. —and wait!” Well, I marched. But not clear out to the car. I didn't get that far before I heard shrieks, and in about 30 seconds out comes Maizie, her dress torn, and holding a hand to one eye. She didn't even see me. Next I heard Jane's voice, no brooks in it now, telling the bunch to stay where they were, she could look after herself. “I'll say she can,” I heard Whoops Palen exclaim. Then she came out, a little disheveled but still alive and lovelier than I'd imagined even she could look. She saw me and started for me—with what looked like murder in her eyes. Instead of which she plunged at me and hugged me tight. “You big fake,” she said. “Why didn't you tell me before that you were raring to go. Do you suppose I've really enjoved ‘»ing a smug little victorian lady all this time?” “You—you want to step out, too?” “Want it? After living in that hick town all these years? Boy, I've been hoping for three months you’d really insist on going places. But I wasn't going to lose you by starting the idea myself. And gosh—how tired I am of always being a lady.” I kissed her. Then I noticed a scratch on the side of her nose. “What happened in there?” I demanded. “What did Mazie do to you?” “Only this,” she said, pointing to her nose. “But I gave the little tramp a poke in the eye and ruined her dress.” One of the club servants came up to me. “Perhaps the lady would like a little court plaster,” he said, smiling respectfully. Just then the bunch came out from the buf- fet. I couldn’t pass up the chance. “That ain’t no lady,” I said, loudly and proudly, “that's my wife!” “Out in the car A Dental Bird HE crocodile, when it feels the need of the services of a dental hygienist, climbs out on the bank of the riVer in which it makes its home, opens its huge mouth invitingly and waits. In due time a bird known as the Nile-bird comes along, sees the job waiting for it and goes to work. It hops into the crocodile’s mouta and picks off all the leeches and other foreign forms of life which may be clinging to the tongue and cavity walls of the crocodile, and then departs. The reptile then closes its mouth and with not so much as a thank you slides back into the water to accumulate another job for another Nile-bird. Eucalyptus Valuable Tl-llmmtne.meofnhubhdl used in the treatment of colds and other respiratory diseases, is a giant tree when found in its native habitat. The trees are 100 feet in height, but sometimes tower to four times this size. The trees are native of Australia, but have been introduced in many parts of the world. There are 140 known varieties and the usefulness of the tree not only includes its medicinal oil yield, but also its lumber, which 1s widely used in Australia. The tree has been found valuable for planting in swampy places to ald in drainage and improving the general health- fulness of the area in which the trees are planted.