The evening world. Newspaper, February 18, 1922, Page 17

i SPOT LT. wee 4 "rake Se THREE SECTIONS. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1922. SECTION TWO. OUNCE A FLING: By LUCIAN CARY Illustrated by WILL B. JOHNSTONE A Swinging Tale of How a Young Husband Treated His Coquetting Spouse to a Surprise and Got One Himself CHARACTERS IN THE STORY. ARTHUR MILLINGHAM® wito wouldn’t take a dare to dine and dance JOHN PALMER, uncommonly-endowed with a sense of duty to protect women—big, powerful, slow to anger, but a caveman when roused. MABEL PALMER, his wife, who had, of all the village maidens, most constantly assumed a “come and take me—if you can” air, and held it after marriage. HARVEY WOODS, village gossip, whose philosophy changes with shift- ing conditions. 1. OHN PALMER had been brought up te take the protective atti- tude toward the women. Mosi of us are brought up to take attitude But John Palmer had than is common of and to this a deeper the duty of sense men to protect gu He morried a girl of whom it was often best friends, too—that sh: dian, Mabel was a slightly turned-up nose Most of the younger crowd in Spar- borough had tried one time or another that air of Mabel's, and said--by her very certainly needed a guar slim person with a and an air. to analyze most of them ended by saying, ‘*Well, anyway, she's a porn flirt.” Maizie Blaze, who ine Mabel better than said that “Come anybody else, this air of Mabel’s meant: ind take me- if you can. Mahet, all the time Of course no girl, not even could wear such an alr It got its effect partly because she used capable of the She could he it so little. She was nicest sort of friendship simple and honest and agreeable. In unflirtatious side of her, that made her such a flirt. She didn't pretend to be interested when a deed, it was that, the young man got to the point of telling her all about his ambitions; she was interested, she positively ma- ternal. was But the young men who told Mabel their ambitions, and that in- cluded all the she ever knew for more than three days, got a kind of shock. The shock came when Mabel—who had been all interest and all sympathy and so very much there —suddenly elusive. All she did was to assume that ‘Come and take me—if you can’’ air of hers. Some of them were so surprised that they never actually proposed to hcr. Some of them were so cutraged that they never could forgive her, even when they saw her doing it to some- wody else. John Palmer was a big man, one of those big, powerful men who are slow to anger—the kind of man who can get aboard the subway at Brooklyn Bridge in the rush hour without step- ping on anybody and without getting mad. He had played guard for three years at Harvard and won a place on the ‘All-American his last year. He had been in love with Mabel Durbrow ever since he could remember. But only at a distance. He had observed Mabel from afar and quietly decided ~ that he would never let himself be any more in love with her than he was. It wasn’t safe, acientiously. Bo one night he found himself talk ing to her alone, on the veranda, at the Country Club's spring dance. fH had talked to her for an hour. whilo young men became He avoided her-—con she cut one dance atter another. It had been exactly as if they were old friends who hadn't seen each other for years and now discovered that they liked each other as well as they had formerly, and perhaps better. John had asked if he ght call. Or she M a ; H a) ri t oie sae OO, ~~ te Po. SHE TRIED TO KICK. BUT JOHN HELD HER TOO TIGHTLY. PALMER WALKED UP THE with a pretty young married woman. MR, DURBROW, Mabel’s father, whose forte is frankness, and who doesn’t hesitate to advise it to his son-in-law. MAIZIE BLAZE, a friend of Mabel’s, who took John’s part in the quarrel —and Mabel’s too. had asked him to eall, OF they had taken it for granted that he would cal). However that was, he began to see her moré and more frequently—to play with her through afternoons and to through short summer evenings summer with ner golf long dance and to STAIRS WITH HER AS walk with her through summer moonlight, the mellow One day, when all Scarborough was waiting breathlessly for the end, John @ickey up Mabel at the railway sta- tion in. his car and deove her home *“Mabel,’’ he said,‘as he set her down SHE TRIED TO SCRATCH, BUT JOHN IF SHE HAD BEEN A CHILD.