Evening Star Newspaper, August 1, 1937, Page 78

HE had lipsticked three different mouths on her own and had decided that the original Isabelle Cummings’ lips were still best for her face. She had read the movie page, the ‘society items,” and the comic strips in the morning paper. She had talked on the telephone with Kay Oliver for twenty minutes; she had talked to Susie Clayton for thirty. She had walked three times around the front yard. Now she stood in the back yard, picking leaves off the syringa bush by the kitchen steps. Back yards, she thought, were depress- ing; though her mother certainly saw to it that this one was neat and green with grass and kind of like a garden, with the three chairs under the big tree. Nobody hardly ever sat in the chairs except the cook. On very hot days Mamie came out and sat down to shell peas or something. “Baby!”” Mamie’s brown face appeared at the window above the kitchen sink. “You want som’pin’ t'eat?”’ Isabelle shook her head. She strolled over to the chairs and sat down. A line of poetry came despairing into her mind: “Oh, world! oh, life! oh, time!” That was Shelley, she remembered; she had read it in English class last year. The poem was all about getting old and dying. She didn’t feel old and dying but she certainly did feel “‘Oh, world! oh, life! oh, time!”” And oh, what was the use of it all! : What, indeed — with all the boys in town having gone off on a camping trip the day before? That is, all the boys who figured in Isabelle’s existence; those young men, just finished with freshman year in college, who kept her sixteen-year-old heart blissful with their constant attentions. ! Two weeks the boys were to be gone. Clos- ing her eyes, Isabelle let her head fall back against the chair. She certainly wasn’t one of those loathsome females who went around saying she simply couldn’t stand women; she had as many girl friends as any girl in town. But after all, two weeks! She heard the click of the catch on the back gate and opened her eyes. The delivery boy from Bailey’s Grocery Store was coming up the walk, striding easily despite the heavy box on his shoulder and the white apron like a cylinder around his long legs. His shoulders were wide and his arms tanned and muscular beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his old shirt. His hair was yellow, Isabelle saw; and it glinted in the sunlight. Bailey’s must have changed delivery boys. The last one had looked like a brunette rat. The boy did not look at Isabelle until he had carried the box to the kitchen and was returning down the walk. His glance slid to- ward her and Isabelle said: ‘‘Hello!"” “Hello,” he answered in a matter of fact tone. “I didn’t think you’d remember me.”" “You remembered me!"’ she reminded him. “That’s different. I see you around all the time.” He took a dollar watch from his . pocket. “I'm late. G’by.” “G’by!"”’ her voice, puzzled and questioning, In the afternoon when she went riding around town with Susie Clayton and Kay Oliver, Isabelle observed abruptly and for no apparent reason: ‘“‘Delivery boys are cer- tainly peculiar people.” This brought blank stares from the other two and Isabelle did not, as she had intended, turn the talk specifically to Bailey’s delivery boy. Obviously, to Kay and Susie, delivery boys were creatures from another world. They wouldn’t know who that boy was; or if they did, they’d think Isabelle had gone crazy even to want to satisfy her mere curiosity about him. It was certainly nothing more than that — a mere passing curiosity. She just happened to be sitting beneath the big tree when he arrived the next morning. He nodded to her and was up the kitchen steps and inside before she could speak. When he came out he was not walking quite so fast and he walked even more slowly as he came near her. “Why shouldn’t I remember you?”’ she asked him, and shivered inside. Good gracious heavens, that wasn’t what she had meant to say! “That’s a silly question,” he said in his THIS WEEK BACh YAR Hlustrated by Leslie L. Benson “WHY,” SHE ASKED, ““WHY DO YOU SEE ME AROUND ALL THE TIME AND | DON'T SEE YOU?" matter-of-fact tone. Leaving the path, he strolled over into the shade where she sat. “Not that it’ll interest you, but I know you don’t even remember me. I knew that yester- day.” Her lips, which had been soft and pouting in a smile, tightened and she glared at him. “That’smean!” shesaid. ‘‘And I wasonly—"’ “Trying to satisfy your curiosity and make it seem like you were being very, very nice to me.” Isabelle positively detested him. He was awful. And he was lying. Anyhow, he was halfway lying. He went on calmly: “I’ll tell you who I am. I'm Jim Rainey and I was twelve years old and you were eight the year we both went to the same grade school.” Isabelle’s eyes widened up at him. Of course she remembered him now and that one year she had gone to the public school. When she was eight the whole day was made exciting if she passed Jim Rainey in the playground and he spoke to her. All the littler children had felt that way about him and the bigger children, his own crowd, had looked up to him, tagged after him wherever he led. That was Jim Rainey then.And now — now he was Bailey’s delivery boy. “Why didn’t you just say grade school?”” Isabelle upbraided him too brightly. She wasn’t going to let him think it made any difference to her that he didn’t go around with the sort of people she went with. “I suppose because I got sore when you pretended to know me when you didn’t. For a second, I thought you had remembered me.” Isabelle had never known a boy who talked with such simply intri- guing frankness. She wanted Jim Rainey to go on and talk some more. “Why,” she asked, unconsciously taking on some of his direct manner, “why do you see me around all the time and I don’t see you?”’ “Because I've always had little jobs, the kind you wouldn’t notice, while you've been growing up into the prettiest girl in town. I'd be bound to see you.” Magazine Section “Oh, world! oh, life! oh, time!” With all the boys away camping, Isabelle faced a two weeks' eternity of boredom — until adventure came in by the back gate. First of a new series about an old favorite by PATTERSON DiaL bochil® Y e