Evening Star Newspaper, August 15, 1937, Page 79

Avgust 15, 1937 THIS WEEK ~ HRol GLIMPSE OF LOVE A big moment and a little girl who wasn't TR TN E WAS wonderful. He was divine. And Isabelle simply could not bear to look at him; his blue uniform and brass buttons, the gold braid — not much, but still gold braid — on his sleeve. She mur- mured, “How do you do,”” and wondered what to do with her hand as she withdrew it from his. Gracious, she felt like a gawky fool but after all, a Navy man! He gave a person that twittery feeling you got seeing newsreels of the fleet going out to sea while a band played ‘‘Anchors Aweigh.” “So this is little Isabelle Cummings!” he said. Isabelle’s expression changed from shy con- fusion to surprise, to resentment, to a frank and stubborn hostility. ““So this is /ittle Isa- belle Cummings!”’ like he was patting her on the head and telling her to be a good little girl and run along. His brother, Wally — two years younger — did not treat her that way. Quite the opposite, in fact. And if Edgar Bowen, just because he was smart enough to have gone through Annapolis and been a whole year in the Navy — if Edgar Bowen thought because he was so disgustingly smart it gave him the right to treat her like a baby, he was out of his mind. She was sixteen and that hardly qualified her for pats on the head; even tone-of-voice pats. And he wasn’t such a great big man himself — wearing his uniform when he could just as well be wearing his natural clothes. Wearing his uniform because his mother wanted to show him off before everybody at the country club tea. Isabelle turned to the Navy man’s even handsomer brother. ‘“Wally,” she said with the grandeur befitting one who had just swept the American Navy off the map, “let’s go get a limeade.” “What do you think of him?”’ Wally asked as they sat down at a table beneath an um- brella on the lawn. I think he’s very different from you.” “Different from me!”’ Wally fairly bellowed a hurt surprise. *“Well I should hope so!” “Wally, you're proud to death of him and you know it.” That little speech let her out very nicely. She hadn’t said a word against Edgar Bowen and, thank heavens, her thoughts were her own. “Sure I'm proud of him.” Wally added: “But don't you tell him I said so. It’s a rule of ours — never a good word for the other. With us it’s ‘argument is the spice of life.” "’ He sighed like a gust of wind on a radio. “Ed’s a great guy; but conventional — boy! Lives by the rule book. Still you can’t disrespect him for it because he means it. Now me — *’ Wally shrugged his great shoulders. “You're the wild bull of the pampas or something.” Wally laughed. He was delighted. Isabelle was sure the girl! Most of the gentlemen in the younger set held the same opinion. Two of them drifted over to her table now and Isabelle was told about the boat they had acquired the day before from “a feller down by the lake”; a small sailboat for which Wally, Clifford Reed and Chester Armstrong had paid fifteen dol- lars and which they owned equally. No one was to see her until she was fixed up and ready for moonlight sails on the lake. To Isabelle this picture was not the thing of beauty it was to the boys. Gracious, any- body could go all the way around the lake and be back where they started from almost before they got started. And besides, suppose the boat sank? The boys had said something about fixing the leaks. How did they know how to fix leaks? They had good sense but people had to have a special kind of sense for boats. She shuddered. That lake was muddy and full of weeds. Susie Clayton, Kay Oliver, and Kay’s “best friend,”” Margy Moore, joined the group. In their enthusiasm for the boat no one noticed that Isabelle had made no comment. She made none until she met Edgar Bowen at Kay Oliver’s house, where the crowd had gathered for the evening. She was startled to find him there. She’d thought he would be out with the debutantes. “So it’s Isabelle,” he greeted her. “So it’s the Navy,” she said. She was glad to see he was wearing his natural clothes. Of course a uniform meant nothing to her. Still ready for it by PATTERSON DIAL he didn’t look so — well, he looked more like the boys she was used to. “Out playing with the kids this evening?” she asked as if she looked on him as the kid. ““That’s no way to talk to me!” He caught her arm and wheeled her through the French windows onto the terrace outside the living room. She gulped, trying not to breathe so fast. She hadn’t ex- pected him to be like this. Maybe he hadn’t meant to treat her like a child that other time. Maybe . . . clothed him in his uniform and she saw him standing on the deck of a battleship, gazing out across a lonely sea, her picture in the in- side pocket of his coat. “What are you?" he asked. She couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or not; whether he was teasing her or not. As if she were a doll, he lifted her by her elbows and set her on a wicker footstool. “Are you the littlest big girl in town or the biggest little girl?” Quirking an eyebrow his smile twisted quizzically. Yes, that was the word — quizzically. He wasn’t teasing her. She was sure. He couldn’t be when he was looking at her with this sort of Ronald Colman expression. It was too thrilling; out here in the dark with only the one streak of light from the French windows and the crowd so close inside, yet so far away. The voices were close but she and Edgar Bowen — they had gone miles away from anybody but themselves. They were brought back to the terrace in short order by Susie Clayton who opened the windows wide and drawled: “Edgar, do come in here. The “WHAT ARE YOU?" HE ASKED. SHE COULDN'T TELLWHETHERHE WAS SERIOUS OR NOT Mogazine Section 7 boys are arguing about that boat — the paint or something. They need your advice.” “If they’d taken my advice,” Edgar said “they’d never have bought that hulk.” “But why not?”’ Susie said. “In the first place it's not worth a dime. In the second place, what good is any boat with- out water?” “Why, there’s the lake!” Susie reminded him. “That tea cup!” Edgar turned to Isabelle. *“Allow me, Miss Cummings.” He held out his hand to help her down. He asked: “And what do you think of the boat, hmm?*’ She stiffened. There it was again. That pat on the head in his voice. So he had been teas- ing her; he, the great big Navy man, had only been amusing himself with her; putting her up on this footstool and leading her on like she was a little girl with grown-up tricks. “I think the boat is marvelous!” she said and, brushing aside his hand, stepped down from the footstool. ““Of course to somebody who goes around on nothing less than an ocean, the lake may seem slightly small; and the boat may seem slightly nothing in com- parison to a battleship. But, I’d hardly call it ‘not worth a dime,’ or the lake a tea cup!” “Isabelle!” Susie forgot her drawl. “Edgar should know. After all, he’s in the Navy.” “Even s0,” Isabelle murmured and strolled off into the living room. Behind her she could hear their burst of laughter. She could barely Well, let them laugh. Isabelle certainly didn’t care. She didn’t; not even if he went back to the Navy with Susie’s picture, maybe, stuck away in his breast pocket. Still, it was a little difficult during the next few weeks not to care — that is, not to admit she cared — when she saw him with Susie or some of the other girls. He didn’t look at them like they were two years younger than Shirley Temple. He treated them like they were real people. But Isabelle — she had to be treated like a case of arrested development. Ensign Edgar Bowen of the United States Navy! And why did he fool around with the younger set at all? Why didn’t he go with the debutantes and leave her crowd alone? One night eight of them went to the Tangle- wood Grill and Isabelle was shocked to find that somehow things had been managed so that Edgar was sitting beside her. She had to let him see she knew he was there, for the waitress stood beside him while Isabelle or-. dered a milk shake and a toasted cheese sand- wich with bacon, nuts and tomatoes. “What a big appetite for such a little girl,” he said, smiling at her. She blushed. She felt just as she had used to feel years ago when some grown-up had caught her biting into her fourth large slice of choco- late cake. Because he mustn’t see her blush, she turned quickly to his brother. . “How’s the boat, Wally?”” she asked, her voice unnaturally loud. The boat. Immediately Clifford Reed and Chester Armstrong broke into the conversa- she was going to knock everybody’s eyes out. Her paint was almoset dry and day after to- morrow she should be ready for launching. “What yqu going to call her?”” Edgar Bowen asked the boys. “Why not,” Susie suggested, ‘ ‘one boat in search of a river’? ” (Continved on page 13) COUGHING AND SPUTTER- ING SHE WAS CAUGHT UNDER THE ARMS, PULLED UP INTO THE AIR AND SET DOWN ON THE DOCK Hlustrated by Leslie L. Benson