The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 2, 1915, Page 14

e e B }f ! 4 " | il fi - Jeague, of which he knew she was a PAGE FOURTEEN | n?m THOMPS( DAVIESS 4‘ AUTHORO?F I °THE MELTING J/} OF MOLLY " " “Yes, I belleve I would,” Henrietta decided judicially. “The ‘New Mown Hay' is what Jasper got for Petunia because he hit her too hard last week and swelled her eye. They is a per- fumery that goes with it at one quar- ter a bottle That makes it all cheaper.” ‘“Exactly the thing, and we mustn't spend money unnecessarily,” Jane agreed. “But I don’t want to trespass on your time, Henrletta, dear,” she added with the deference she would have used in speaking to the president of the Nation league or the founder of Hull House. “No, ma’am, I'm glad to do it, and I'll go quick 'fore it gets any later in the day for me to watch the clock,” answered Henrletta in stately tones that were very like Jane's and which I had never heard her employ before. . And before any of the three of us got our breath her bare little feet were flashing up my front walk. “Help!” exclaimed Polk as he leaned back from his wheel and fanned him- self with his hat. “Do you use the same methods with grown beasts that Yyou do with cubs?” he added weakly. “It's the same she has always used on me, only this is more dramatic. Beware!” I said with a laugh as I in- pisted on jJust one squeeze of Jane's Wwhite linen arm as she was climbing back into the car. “That's a remarkably fine child, and she should have good, dependable, businesslike habits put in the place of faulty and useless ones. Her profani- ty will make no difference for the pres- ent and can be easily corrected. Don’t interfere with her attending to my commissions, Evelina. Let's start, Mr. Hayes.” And Jane settled herself calmly for the spin out Providence road. “All the hundred dollars_all by her- self, Jane?” I called after them. “Yes,” floated back positively in the wake of the auto. For several hours I attended to the business of my life in a haze of medi- tation. If Henrfetta ticks off the same number of minutes on the woman clock from Jane's standpoint that Jane has marked off from her own moth- er's high noon is going to strike before Wwe are ready for it. But it was only an hour or two of high minded communing with the fu- ture that I got the time for before I was involved in the whirl of dust that swirled around the storm center to darken and throw a shadow over Glen- dale about the time of the publication of the Glendale News, which occurs every Thursday near the hour of noon, 80 that all the subscribers can take that enterprising sheet home to con- sume while waiting for dinner and can leave it for the women of their fami- lies to enjoy in the afternoon. I suspect that the digestion of Jane's equality rally invitation interfered with the digestion of much fried chicken, corn and sweet potatoes under the roof trees of the town, and I spent the afternoon in hearing results and keep- ing up the spirits of the insurgents. Caroline came in with her head so high that she had difficulty in seeing over her very slender and aristocratic nose with a note from Lee Greenfleld ‘which had just come to her, asking her to go with him in his tar over to Hills- boro to spend the day with Tom Pol- lard’s wife, a visit he knows she has .been dying to make for two months, | for she was one of Pet’s bridesmaids. He made casual and dastardly mention that there would be a moon to come home by, but ignored completely the fact that Tuesday was the day on which he had been invited by the B e THE NONPARTISAN LEADER Ter ‘ruany. -l Go commission. I helped her compose the answer,. and 1 must say we hit Lee- only in high spots. I could see she was scared to death, and so was I, but her dander was up, and I backed mine up along side it for the purpose of support. Be- sides I feel in my heart that that note will dynamite the rocky old situation between them into something more easily handled. She had just gome to dispatch the missive by their negro gardener when Mamie and Sallie came clucking in. Mamie’s face was pink and high spir- ited, but Sallie was in one complete slump of mind and body. “Mr. Haley has just stopped by to say that he thinks no price is too great to pay for peace and fellowship and good will in a community,” she said as she dropped into a rocker and looked pensively after the retreating figure of the handsome young dominie, who had accompanied them to the gate, but wisely no farther. He didn’t know that Jane had gone with Polk. *“And women to,pay the price,” an- swered Mamie spiritedly. “I have just told Ned that as yet I do not know enough to argue the question of wo- man’s wrongs with him, but I have learned a few of her rights. One of mine 1s to have himaccept any invita- tion I am responsible for having my friends offer him and to accompany me to the éntertainment if I desire to go. I reminded him that I had not troubled him often as an escort since my marriage. He “vas so scared that he almost let little Ned drop out of his arms, and he got in an awful hur- ry to go to town, but he asked me to have his gray flannels pressed before Tuesday and to buy him a blue tie to go with a new shirt he has. I never like to spank Ned or the children, but I must say it does clear the atmos- phere.” “You don’t think we could put it off or—or”— Sallie faltered. . “No!” answered Mamie and I togeth- er, and as I spoke I called Jasper to set out more rockers and have Petunia get the tea tray ready, for I saw Aunt Augusta go across the road to collect Cousin Martha and@ Mrs. Hargrove and the rest, while Nell whirled by in her rakish little car on her way to the square and cnlled that she would be back. And it was most interesting to listen to a minute description of the com- posite fit thrown by the male popula- tion of Glendale at their rally invita- tion, but as time.‘was limited I finally coaxed the conversation around to the subject of the viands to be offéred the lordly creatures in the way of propitia- tion for the insult that we were forc- ing them to swallow by taking mat- ters in our own hands, and then we had a really glorious time. The afternoon wore away on the wings of magie, and the long, purple |- shadows were falling across the street, a rustle of cool night wind was stirring ‘the treetops, and the first star was coming timidly out into the gloaming before they aH realized that it was time to hurry and scurry under roof trees. Lee Greenfield was waiting at the | gate for Caroline. Just as Henrietta had taken a last peep at the clock on the hall table and gone to answer Sallie’s call .to come and help Aunt Dilsie in’ the bedding of the kitten and the pup Polk’s auto stopped at the gate, and he and Jane came up the front walk in the twi- light together. She had on his flannel coal: over- her linen one, and his expression was one of glorified and-translucent daze. I didn’t ‘look at her. I felt as if I . to wéét and rally dround the “Is thie right?’ he asked as he gently took me in his arms. - couldn’t. YT was Scared! “For a Sec- ond she held me in her arms and kiss- ed me, really—the first time she had ever done it in all my life—and then went on upstaire with a nice, cool good night and “thank you” to Polk. “Evelina,” he said as he handed me the empty lunch basket and also the empty fish bucket, the first he had ever in his life brought in from Little Har- peth, “I was right about that hallelu- jah chorus being the true definition of the real woman, only they are more so. I have seen a light, and you point- ed the way. Will you forgive me for being what I was—and trust me—with —with—good night!” He was gone! Jane’s kiss had been one of revela- tion to me. For a long time I sat out there in the cool, hazy, windy autumn twilight breeze that was heavy with the scent of luscious wild grapes and tasseled corn, fanning the flame of loneliness in me until I coukdn’t have stood it any longer if a tall gray figure of relief had not come up the street and called me down to my front gate. “Hail the instigator of a bloodless revolution,” laughed the Crag as I stopped myself with difficulty on the opposite side of the gate from him. “The city fathers will have to capitu- late, and now for the reign of the mothers!” “And the same old route to subjec- tion chosen, through their stomachs to their civic hearts,” I answered impu- dently. Overlooking my pertness, he went on: “Mayor Shelby was at home with Mrs. Augusta for two hours after din- ner, and as I eame by the postoffice I heard him telling Polk in remarkably chastened if not entirely chaste lan- guage that it was ‘better to let the women have their kick-up on a feeding proposition than on something worse,’ as he classically put it.” S “I know it is a great victory,” I an- swered weakly, “but I'm too tired to glory in it. ‘I wish I was Sallie’s pup- py being trotted across Aunt Dilsie’s knee or kit getting a rocking in Cousin Martha's arms.” “Would any other arms do for the rocking?”’ came in a queer, audacious voice, with a note in it that stilled something in me and made all the world seem to be holding its breath. “I'm tired of revoluting, and it's—it’s tenderness- I want,” I faltered in a voice that hardly seemed strong enough to get so far up out of my heart as to reach the ears of the Crag as he bent his head down close over mine.. He had come on my side of the gate at the first weak little ery I had let myself make a minute or two before. : “Is this right?” he asked as he gently took me in his arms, hollowed his shoulder for a place for my head, and, leaning against the old gate, he began ‘to swing me gently to and fro, his cheek against my hair and humming Aunt Dilsie’s “Swing low, sweet char- fot, for to carry me home.” It was. I know what I want, and I shall have it. I'll fight tho whole world with naked hands for him. And I'm also going to find some way to get Mm with all his absurd niceties of Qouor ibtict, Just Decuuse that will make him happier. I’ll begin at the beginning and some’ way unclasp those gourdy tendrils that ; Sallic has been strangling him with. I will bunch all the rest of his fem- inine collection and take them on my own hands. P’'m going to make a gov-. ernor out of him and then a United States senator and finally a supreme- judge. Help! Think of the old moss- back being a progressive! - But that’s: my party and Jane’s. I know he is going to hate ten'ibly to'have me ask him to marry me, and I hate to hurt him so, but it is my duty to get Jane's $50,000 so the five may be as happy as I am tonight, only there aren’t five other Crags. I know it will be a lifelong mortification to him to have me do it, but he lost his chance tonight grandmothering me. Still, I did turn my lips away. I was not quite ready then. I am now. If he wants to go on wearing clothes like that I'm going to let him, even on the senate floor, but I can’t ever stand for Cousin Jasmine to cut his hair any more. 'I want to do it myself, and I'm going to tell her so and why. She and I have cried over that miniature of the lost young Confederate cousin of hers, and she’ll understand me, I am sure. But as I think it over—it always is best to be kind, and I believe I'll let him get through this rally—it's just four days—a free and happy man. I don’t know whether to go in and wake up Jane or not. I would like to go to sleep with that kiss revelation between us, but maybe it is my duty to the five to extract some data from her while it is fresh on the foam. I am afraid it is going to go hard with her, but somehow I have a newborn faith in Polk that makes me feel that he will make it as easy as he can for her. Isn't it a glorious thing to realize that neither she nor I will have to sit and be tortured by waiting to see what those men are going to do? CHAPTER XV. Dynamite. HEN a man injures a wo- man’s feelings by any partic- ular course of conduct to which she objects the mater- nal in her rises to the surface, and she treats and forgives him as she would a naughty child, but @ man makes any kind of woman affront into a lover’'s quarrel. That is what masculine Glen- dale has been doing to its women folks for four days, and I believe everybody has been secretly enjoying it. - As to the rally, they have stood aside with their hands in their pockets and their noses in the air, and if it hadn't been for Aunt Augusta and Nell and Jane being natural born carpenters and draymen we might have had to give it up and let them go on with it to their own glory. When Nell and Jane went to see Mr. Dodd about building the long tables to serve the barbecue dinner on he said he was too busy to do it and hadn’t even any lumber to sell. Then things happened in my back yard that it sounds like a romance: to write about. Jane sent me over to borrow the Crag's tenm and wagon and Henrietta and Cousin Martha and any of the rest of his woman impedi- menta that I could get. He was out of town, trying a case over at Bolivar, and wouldn’t get back until Monday night. . : Jane and Nell and Aunt Augusta took the two axes and one large ham- mer and tore down my back fence while I and the others loaded the planks on the wagon. Jane appointed Henrietta to sit and hold the slow old horses in case they should have got demoralized by the militant atmos- phere pervading Glendale and try to bolt. I mever saw any human being enjoy herself as Henrietta did, and it was worth it all ‘Just to look into her radiant: countenance. . Jane took all the hard top blows to do herself and left the unloosening of the lower nails to Aunt Augusta while Nell ripped off the planks that stuck. I could almost hear Nell's long, polish- ed finger nails go with a rip every, time she jerked a partxcular]y tough old plank into subjection, and Aunt Augusta dispensed encouraging axioms about pioneer work as she banged along behind Jane. Jane herself look- ed as cool as a cucumber, didn't get the least bit ruffled and had the ex- pression on her face that the truly normal woman has while she is hem- ming baby’s flannel petticoat. (To be contmuefl) ey o