The Seattle Star Newspaper, March 31, 1922, Page 15

(Continued Prom Page 6) around the heels & the battalion to recover a position In it. He always reminded Sabre of | gray old Scotch terrier toddling ng behind and @round the flanks & company of ffs. He returned heverforgiven example of it ever's the joke of it?" she demanded, when one day she found speaking of Major Millet, another neighbor and a great friend of hers, as “Old Hopscotch Millet.” “Whatever's the joke of it? He doesn't play hopscotch.” “No, but he bounds about,” Sabre explained. “You know the way he bounds about, Madel. He's about ninety, “m sure he ian't, nor fifty.” « ‘Well, anyway, he's past his first jyouth, but he's always bounding about to show how agile he is, He's always calling out ‘Rite OF and Jumping to do a thing when there’ away rather Scotch terrier “His name's Millet. Her annoyance caused her voice be sitting te squeak. “Why call him any- line of fe- | thing?’ would Sabre laughed. “Well, you know Mt to the | how a ridiculous thing like that the line|comes into your head and you can’t and it} set rid of it. You know the way,” Mabel declared she was sure she did not know the way. “They don't come into my head. Look at the Perches—not that I care what name speed | You call them, Rod, Pole or Perch! rus, | What's the sense of it? What does ag |'t meant” hing | Sabre said tt didnt mean anything. ive. “You just get some one called Perch ly and usually drop and catch Bt and]@nd then you can’t help thinking of | tire | that absurd thing rod, pole or perch. to. | Tt just comes.” im-| “T call it childish and rude,” Mabel Miss Fargus at her end the loud word ‘would whiz down the cl @aughter to daughter to rous direction, each to —Papa!—Papa}—Papa’” ‘would reach Mr. Fargus at of a thunderbolt; and Mr. ‘waiting for it with agitated clam. “Papa! ely shoot at their pai Plate of buns with “Bune— Buns—Buns” all down the line, Marly when Mr. Fargus’ gray would sometimes appear the dividing wall to Sabre in t there would come a “always on her nd from several |legs. And she was always on her legs and always doing what she had Vv Mrs. Perch was a fragile tittle body Gisappear with great swiftness. The Farguses kept but one sery-jwall of the things she had always always eaten, and always pursuing loud cracks, Uke | "et much room between the two. Bhe was intensely weaksighted, Pargus “did” | bat she never could find her glasses; the honse. One “did™ | ant she kept locked everything that “did” the silver, | Would lock, but she never could find the fowls. And what) her keys. She held off all acquaint ey “did” they were al- | anew by the rigid handle of “that” Pargus, in | before their names, but she was very room, and |fondof “that Mr. Sabre,” and Sabre the garden. | retumed a great affection for her clock; | With his trick of seeing things with | his mental vision he always saw old | pone Perch toddling with moving lips and fembling fingers between the fron walls of her prejudices, and thie Was a pathetic picture to him, for or pleasure were not discernible | 33 i & al 4 i! to Sabre, an indescribable polgnaner to the pathos of the pic: ture, Shp never could pass a baby without sopping to adore it, and an 3 ig i : ; : # ths In wary eva- tide of rejuvenation doing” the gar- Teason to house, the sn up and|ing the mevement of her lips and the fumbling motions of her fingers. Also amasing tides of glory when ihe was watching for her son, and saw him. Young Perch was a tall and slight young man with a happy laugh and an air which suggested to Sabre, after puralement, that his spirit was leisure from these flights cad alights and swings upon a twig, not lution of acrostics.| engrossed in his body. He did not was also fond of chess and at-| look very strong. His mother said e game of Patience, | 5 $ .|ter try these, Mother.—“They injure ‘was intensely absorbed | only alighted in his body as a bird, ¢Vér “going to sort the room with! thi 1 GUESS “THAT CALL,IS FOR ME= A BUZZ FROM MY FRILL ANY MINUTE, AN' SHE PROBABLY | | offer them till she was weakening im the search, and she would take them grudgingly with, “They don't suit me.” Similarly with the keys, | accepted only after prolonged and) maddening search. “Well, you'd bet-| the lock. Yet Mra. Rod, Pole or Perch, who confided much in Sabre, and who had | no confidences of any kind apart! from her son, would often say to} Sabre: “Freddie always finds my | keys for me, you know. He finds | everything for me, Mr. Sabre.” And the tide of glory would flood | amazingly upon her face, tranafig- | uring it, and Sabre would feel an tm mensely poignant clutch at the heart. | vi The Perches’ house was called | Puncher's—Puncher’s Farm, a few hundred yards alohg the lane icading to the great highroad—and it was the largest and by far the most un tidy house in Penny Green. Succes. sive Punchers of old time, when it had been the moat considerable farm | in all the country between Chovens. bury and Tidborough, had added to it in stubborn defiance of ail lawn| of comfort and principles of domes. | tle architecture, and now, shorn alike of its Punchers and of its pastures, the homestead that might easily have housed twenty was mysteriously filed to overflowing by two. Mra.) Perch was fond of mying she had lived Im nineteen houses “in her time," and Sabre had the belief that | the previous eighteen had all been | separately furnished and the entir umalation, together with every newspaper taken in during their oc cupation, brought to Puncher’s. Halt | the rooms of Puncher’s were ao filled with furniture that no more furni ture, and scarcely a living person, | could be got in; and half the rooms | were #0 filled with boxes, packages, | bundles, trunks, crates, and stacks of newspapers that no furniture at| all could be got in. Every room was! known to Mrs. Perch and to Young Perch by the name of some article it contained and Mra. Perch was for-| your Uncle Henry’s couch in it,” or | “the room with the big blue box with | the funny top in {t,” or some other | by acrostics; and regular eve-| he had a weak heart. He aaid he every week were spent by | had a particularly strong heart and in unriddling the problems | used to protest, “Oh, Mother, I do in chess and acrostie columns | wish you wouldn't talk that bosah journals taken in for the purpose.|about me.” To which Mrs. Perch ‘They would sit for hours solemnly | would my, “It's no good saying you staring at one enother, puffing at| haven't got a weak heart because pipes, in quest of a hidden word be | you have got a weak heart and ginning with one letter and ending you've always had a weak heart. with another, or in search of the Surely I ought to know.” | Young Perch would reply, “You ought to know, but you don’t know. You get an idea in your head and on a board but to do them in| nothing will ever get it out. Some your head.) Likewise for hours the | day you'll probably get the idea that two in games of chess and in conr | I've got two hearts and if Sir Fred petitive Patience, one against the! erick Treves swore before the Lord other, to see who would come out | Chief Justice that I only had one first. And to all these mental exer.| heart you'd just sy, The man's a cises—chess, acrostics and Patience perfect fool.’ You're awful, you —an added interest was given by Mr. know, Mother.” Fargus’ presentation of them as il-| Hoe used to reprove his mother like lustrative of his theory of life. that. Iv Mrs. Perch would give agrtm little And then there were the Perches— | laugh, accepting his weaknens. “Young Perch and that everlasting! That was how they lived old mother of his,” as Mabel galled | Young Perch always cartied about them. |in one pocket a private pair of spec- Sabre always spoke of them as|tacies for his mother and in another “Young Rod, Pole or Perch” and\a private net of keys for her most “Old Mrs. Rod, Pole or Perch.” This used receptacles. When the search ‘was out of what Mabel called his for her spectacles had exhausted childish and incomprehensible habit even her own energy, Young Perch of giving nicknames—High Jinks | would say, “Well, you'd better use and Low Jinks the outstanding and! these, Mother.” It was of no use to ADVENTURES | OF ce Et Bet THE RESCUE Nancy and Nick were sleeping tain and over the Fiveand-ten-cent- peacefully under a nice bush in the store Mountain and over the Moun. tain-that-wasn’t-there! Pleasant valley between the Blectric | y+ really, Nancy tidiciall Mountain and the Eliderdown Moun: away from the mountains, eastward, tain where Twelve Toes eft the and Nick was walking away from magician’s star and flew to @ place | them, westward, leaving the lost rec fn the dark sky right over their|ord near the place they had been | heads. He had turned into a bat, | sleeping. you know. | If Naney had kept on she would Then he untied the string of the | have walked over a high cliff, and if bag he carried and two dreams! Nick had kept on he would have oozed out like smoke out of a pipe.| walked into a thorny patch where ‘Teese dreams, unlita smoke, went| sharp thorns would have torn him down instead of up, and made |to pieces. wtraight for the Twins. | But again the red feather rescued One dream whispered to Nancy, | them. It jumped out of Nick's pocket “It's morning and you and Nick are |and, stretching itself on the ground, awake rection I shall show you. You will be| about to take his last step over the reat of the Seven Mountains | woke him. before nightfall.” Then flying after Nancy em other dream whispered the |feather did exactly the same thing. Hr & Hi i RR g That me thing to Nick. | Another step would have brought fo Naney got up and Nick got up| ber to the edge of the precipice. But And tie two of them began to walk | her toe caught, she tripped, fell, and in their sleep, but in opponite direc: | wakened - tions. | “Where am 1?” she cried. “And ; They both dreamed that they were | where's Nick? What's hapnena!?” é walking over the Eiderdown Moun (To Be Continued) tain and over the Chocolate Moun (Copyright, 1922, by Seattic Star) room similarly described. | | Mrs. Perch was always “going t | but as the task was always contin | gent upon elther “when I have got @ servant into the house,” or “when I have turned the servant out of the house”—these two states represent- \ing Mrw. Perch's occupation with the servant problem——-the couch of Uncle | Henry, the big blue box with the! funny top, and all the other deni |zens of the choked rooms remained, like threatened ten, precariously but securely. But not unvisited! Sabre once spent a week In the house, terminating a summer holi day a little earlier than Mabel, and | he had formed the opinion that mother and son never went to bed at night and never got up in the morning. In remote hours and in |remote quarters of the house mys jterious sounds disturbed hia sleep. | Kerily peering over the banisters, he | discerned the pair moving, like lost ja more unfortunate day tended to aee how he looked before | and of} T “THINK THAT 1S FoR ME, MR I'VE BEEN EXPECTIN') 4 MACK © I'M WATIG FoR A CALL FROM “THe “WOMEN'S ALL ABOUT? MAYBE | tS ONLY A ‘WRONG | NUMBER LET ME ANSWER IT WITH DIGNITY, AN’ IF BY THANKS, OLD MAN | or’—was in fact a horticulturiat of very fair reputation. Hoe specialized in aweet peas and roses; and Sabre, }in the early days of bf intimacy with the Rod, Pole or Perch house- hold, was surprised at the livelihood that could apparently be made by the disposal of seeds, blooms and cut tings. “Fred's getting quite famous with { || his sweet peas,” Babre once said to | Mrs, Perch. “I've Been reading an iustrated interview with bim in The Country House.” Tides of glory into Mrs. face, that dreadful floppy hat of his, Mr. Sabre. It.couldn’t have happened on I fully in Perch’s phohographs were taken course it #0 happened I was turning servant out of the house and couldn't attend to it. That | souls, about the passages, Mrs. Perch |with the skirts of a red dreswéng- | gown in one hand and a candice in | the other, Young Perch disconaolate- | jly in her wake, yawning, with an other candle. Young Perch called | {this “Prowling about the Infernal |house all night: and one office of |the prowl appeared to Sabre to be, the attendance of pans of milk warm. ing in a row on oll stoves and sug gesting, with the glimmer of the stoves and the steam of the pans, | mysterious oblations to midnight) gods. vir Mrs. Perch believed her son could do anything and, in the matter of hia capabilities, had the strange con: | | vietion that he had only to write and | awk anybody, from Mr. Asquith down- wards, for employment in the high: | leut offices in order to obtain It | Young Perch—who used to protest, “well, but I've got my work, Moth | Perch never did suit him. it. It's no good my saying anything to him.” This was an opinion that old Mrs. was constantly reiterating. Young Pe was equally given to declaring, “I can't do anything with my Mot you know.” And yet it was Sabre’s observation that eagh istered by the other, Young once told Sabre he had never siept a night away from his mother since | | | “Ah, if only he hadn't worn | | dread: | fully floppy hat doesn’t suit him. It} But he will wear | | life was entirely guided and admin: | Perch | he was seventeen, and he was never | absent from her half a day but she was at the window watching for his return | If he had been asked to name his} particular friends these were the friends he saw them constantly saw another. Quite suddenly she came back into hin life. Nona returned into his life. (Continued Tomorrow) By Zeo Polly and Paul—and Paris, (Copyright, 1922, vy The Seattio Star) Beekley | CHAPTER L—WANDERERS IN THE NIGHT | “where are the others? We've | Barray's arm, staring with worried leyes at the deserted street behind “It's all right,” he reas#uree her. “They'l) soon catch up, Come-—we'll | walk baek to the last turning, They | must have missed us there.” | They walked back, but only still. | |neas and the ealm moonlight met | their shouts and yodels, “It dosn't matter really, does it?” , |nee to Violet.” Barray suggested, “They're a crowd Get up and walk in the di-| caught Nick's toe just ax he was|jost them!’ Polly drew away from | together, not missing us.” “But Miss Rand came with you It doesn't seem right for me to go prancing off this way with her es cort——" “Oh, Violet! She's always taken care of, She'll be glad to lose me for awhile. If that's all that’s worrying you Polly suddi led Norma's admonition, * r u gO on ahead. And Norma's easeér. ness that Polly should occupy Bar would have named. He | Infrequently | | | nerved estly, about? was sincere. cerned enough about Violet I've done m, BY AHERN | HERE, KEEP YouR CLAMPS OFF THAT | PHONE, MACK!» ITS ME “THEY WAN'T ON MAT CHINTROLA! THEY'LL RING OFF IF] | * THE i,” Mr. Neeley went on with his story, “my father picked the little fellow up carefully as he could and took out the arrow and 4i4 what he could in a hurry for him, but the men all knew that they must get back to their party | before dark or they would prob. ably be caught by savages who| wore hiding among the bushes. “So they Just did the best they | could, and when father mounted | his mule he carried the wounded | boy like a baby in front of him./ “It wasn't hard—he was just a| little fellow 6 or 7 years old. 1 “But hurt him, and the loss of blood the motion of the mule made him thirsty~awfully thirsty. “I want a drink of water, 1} want a drink of water,’ he said weakly. ‘Please, please, my mouth | is all dry! 1 want a drink of water.’ “That made father feel more sorry than ever for him, but he| knew that for the boy's sake as | well as for the sake of all of them, | go off the trail in| search of water, “"Pretty soon, he couldn't sonny, pretty | It Has Happened in JUST A MINUTE MISS EATON, ’/LLCLOSE \T FoR You! DAVID'S STORY (Chapter VID a | . = oe | THE OLD HOME TOWN ——, HOLD NEWT SHES AREARIN © = OF OVERALLS -FUR CAPS 5 LNDERS , FLY PAPER ASSORTED CIGARS 6 ng BROKE OF /N JAIL — the Best Families WHICIA RIGHT ANDO WHICH cert ft soon,’ he would soothe him, ‘pretty soon—s00n as we get to a good place.’ “Then he would think hard as he could, however he was going to manage to get that water for the boy, when their very lives depend. ed on haste. “presently the trail led thru a clear, swift stream, and taking off his soft, felt hat, holding the boy tight in his left arm, he leaned far over, and with bis hat in his right hand, scooped it up full of the cool water, and gave it to the child to drink without even stop ping the mule for an instant, came into the stern fac of the men as they told the story father laying the moaning child in mother’s quick despairing cries of whose husband the sobbing of his fatherless chil- dren who kept asking, ‘But who will take care of us in the Who will take us now that papa’s gone (To Be Continued) “T recall how they mp. The sa mether’s startled, the woman had been kil arms, and questions; the new country? re of “Of course, |ray’s attention a bit. . . . Norma's |desig¢n was evident. That it was working to perfection, she alone ob- | and with glee. | Then Polly's spirit sagged a Uttle, Barray sensed it. “Listen, my child," said he earn: | “What are you disturbed | Don’t you trust me?" “Of course I do." Polly's answer | “It's only that—" | “that you think I am not con Well, Let's best, haven't 1? ee ucla : i a a ae Mey | thing Viokt’s a good! ‘The understands things. She | slowly knows everybody who was there to- | t night. worry.” he philosophical. sport were Now let's free our mind of | matter, ing. Tell me the truth now—you are |evil is a frightened because you are out with | deed. @ man who is not your husband—in | in deception, Paris, at night, late? Come, isn't that it?” IN THE CITY —1TS NOT KNOWN YET WHETHER HES MARRIED Now, let's urgue the | scandal, ensibly,”’ walking along again, Polly despite herself begin-| ning to take Barray's view of the | of: “I don't doubt,” he went on, “that Polly smiled wanly, but said noth-|in your native town this would be something to bother about. “Come, child, I read your thoughts. | Saxon countries the appearance of awful as evil itself, In. the real sinners, being skilled with it, Ti is the innocent, self-respecting vic. who scorn to dix Polly nodded her head vigorously. guise it, that suffer the gossip and tims of accident, —— TOM THIS 1S THE THIRD TIME I'VE ASKED You To BRING ME THOSE SCISSORS OFF THE TABLE THERE! Isn't it ttle girl?” “Yes,” said Polly slowly, "t pose you are right." You've nothing to be asbamed sup- ‘Of course not?" ‘Very well, then! You're off for a walk across Paris at the most mys- terious and fascinating hour of all the 24!" Polly stole a look at her watch, falf-past three! There was @ thrill in it. She tucked her arm again within Barray's and they went slowly on... (To Be C Ic Anglo- ed)