Puslapio vaizdai
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and that a pressing, previous engagement claimed him, and so got away.

Outside, in the street, he was aware of being distinctly sore and outraged. "I will make you prime minister!" What a little fool she was! "You know as well as I do that of us two I am the stronger character." He turned there and bolted down a side street. Why, he would never marry that woman in this world! Who was she, anyhow? Idiot! Conceited little monkey!

A few minutes later, having come near being run over by a motor and also having collided violently with a man larger than himself who was very mad about something, too, it occurred to him that it might be well to calm himself, and, finding that he chanced to be in the neighborhood of his inferior friends, he thought that he would drop in informally; he happened to know that they made a practice of giving the most delightful informal suppers to select little parties of lions every Sunday. So he went in, and he found, to his astonishment, that that speech of his (or hers) had made him a double lion. The host, who had treated him as an equal before (the misguided man treated all his guests as equals, not having the remotest suspicion of his own classing), now treated him with a good-humored mock-worship which was inexpressibly soothing. "You are slated for big things, do you know it?" he said confidentially. "Do you realize that you 're beginning to pull a stroke oar?"

He could not help feeling much better at once, and with the mental uplift came a buck-shot charge of shame, shattering the petty side of his self-esteem and making him realize with a sudden flame of satisfaction that he was engaged to her, after all. They would be married, and no one would ever know how much she helped him, and the help would be there at hand always. And she was beautiful, and she was ri

Just then the door opened, and in came Miss Charybdis, her hair confined in a fur basket upside down, and wearing a coat that made her look like an educated seal. There is no use talking, the girl that

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He managed to be near her very soon, and she looked up at him with adoring eyes that were almost too good to be true. "Oh, you are going to be such a great man," she said. "How do you ever do it? And that speech! Just think, I can't even make out what it's all about, and there you could stand up and say it without any notes."

"We

He felt tremendously flattered. get used to all that in the House," he said. "No notes there often, you know."

"No, I suppose not," she said yet more adoringly, and he looked into her soft, immature gaze and knew that she would love him, too, if he asked her. What a situation! He felt fairly beside himself!

Very late that night he reached his bed and strove to think. The problem was now awful, and there was no steering between. He must wreck himself to save himself. It must be Scylla or it must be Charybdis. What should he do? What could he do? He could not marry a woman who set out from the start as brighter than he was himself, and neither could he get on without that woman. But how could he break with her even if he wanted to? And if he did break with her, and she married one of his opponents in the House and told that opponent that— oh, he simply could not contemplate that! And then this adorably, sweet, loving, trusting, blue-eyed girl (God bless her!), a million times too good for him, and who would never give him advice, or give herself any airs, or be any help to anybody! What a mess! Why did such cursed luck come to him? He swore, he fumed, he fussed, he canvased pros and cons. In the

end he

It was certainly the only wise course to take.

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THE JOYOUS ADVENTURE OF ETTA

THE

BY GEORGE PHILLIPS

WITH PICTURES BY J. R. SHAVER

HE junior department of a certain. big Sunday-school was going on a picnic. Miss Devons, commander-in-chief of some eighty East Side boys and girls, was counting her charges as they assembled at the ferry-house one bright May morning, smiling at the expectant faces, subduing the more adventurous spirits, encouraging the timid. At last the roll was complete, and she drew a sigh of relief as she surveyed the fluttering throng. But her satisfaction was short-lived. Loud sobs rose from the corner where Etta Schwartz-Sieling had flattened her nose against the glass and had caught sight of the ferry-boat. In vain did the girls flock about her and remonstrate against such conduct on a holiday; in vain did Miss Devons clasp the stiffly starched child to her heart and beseech her to moderate her grief or at least to offer some explanation of it. Etta's sobs continued, punctuated by exclamations of despair.

"Nein, nein, es geht nicht," she wept. "Nefer can I on de boat go."

"But, Etta," Miss Devons expostulated, "what is the matter? Don't you want to go on the picnic?"

"Teacher, Teacher," wailed Etta, "it aind I don't wants I should go mit you; it aind noddings like dat. But I don't like dat I shall be drowneded over der sea."

"But you 're not going to be drowned," said Miss Devons. "We're only going to Rockaway, and you don't have to go in the ocean if you don't want to. I only thought you 'd like to paddle on the nice, smooth sand."

"Teacher, jawohl, I likes I should paddle; but it aind paddlin' when you drowns, und you burns, und crowds screams."

At this juncture Mark O'Reilley came to the rescue.

"Aw, dem Dutchies dey 're loony!" he exclaimed in disgust. "Can't see no boat but dey t'inks it 's anoder General Slocum. Say, you, we don't go by no steamer. Don't yer know dat?”

At the allusion of the still-recent disaster the crowd wavered. Did they not all know friends whose friends had never returned from some excursion begun, perhaps, as gaily as this one? And why should they be exempt? Longing glances were cast at the door, nervous whispers ran through the groups, and a stampede was imminent, when rescue came from an unexpected quarter. Cap in hand and a valiant smile on his face, Giuseppe Salvatori stood forward to prove his devotion to the lady who had been his guiding-star since he entered the department, an unreclaimed "dago." Now he was an American, and would be worthy of his new dignity.

"Mees Devons, Ah go wit' you," he declared, feeling capable of following Mark and his dearly beloved teacher to destruction, if necessary. "Ah not know moch about steam-aire, bot all times Ah go wit' you."

Where Giuseppe went, there Louisa May and Florabel went also, and the rest of the department followed their lead. Even Etta's fears were soothed by the promise of Miss Devons's hand during the entire trip, and the excursionists clattered on board the ferry-boat with high hopes. and radiant faces once more.

Etta was newly arrived in America, having lived in Germany until the previous year, when her widowed father, Herr Johann Sieling had brought her to America to try his fortune. Here he prospered amazingly, and within three months had courted and married the widow Schwartz and her seven children. The lady con

ducted a thriving candy-shop on Second Avenue, and all went merrily until Mr. Sieling fell under an elevated train and was killed, leaving Etta to his wife. Unlike the traditional German stepmother, she treated Etta like one of her own brood, even bestowing her first name upon her, that the child might feel at one with her own children, who had added Mr. Sieling's name to their own, a complicated, but by no means unusual arrangement. Unfortunately, Mrs. Schwartz Sieling had left the Fatherland too young to remember the homelife there, and Etta, for eleven years her father's only care, missed sadly the kisses and caresses to

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Once across the river, the party climbed aboard the special car reserved for them, and when they had settled themselves, the girls in prim pairs on the seats, the boys mostly on the floor and out of the windows, they were a sight to behold. Not a boy but had had his face scrubbed and his Sunday tie forced upon him by an anxious mother; not a girl but had had her best dress ironed in the small hours of the night, and had slept, or rather not slept, with her hair twisted in the tight, wet knobs which are guaranteed produce ringlets of a high-staying quality. On every ribboned head reposed a broad chip hat, garlanded with flowers, the general effect being that of a highly colored garden in which all the flowers of all the seasons were miraculously blooming at once. The minute the train had started, every hat was removed,and every ringlet and bow was adjusted with care, and every ruffle was smoothed over

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Drawn by J. R. Shaver

"BEFORE THE GLORY OF THESE, M'REE'S BOOTS OF WHITE KID, . . . FADED INTO INSIGNIFICANCE"

with longing eyes the merry groups she was too shy to join, or envied with all her sad little heart the favored few who were singled out for the clumsy attentions of the gallants of the class. How gladly, thought Etta, would she return, after the briefest of sucks, a gift of gundy, if it were ever offered her, and what gratitude she would bestow upon the lordly giver! Moreover, she was an accomplished little housewife, and the happy-golucky housekeeping of her stepmother filled her tidy soul with horror, so that the land was accursed in her sight, and her only bright moments were those when she sat, as now, in the shadow of her teacher's arm.

the thin knees, and the female portion of the expedition prepared to enjoy itself with the ever-happy subject of clothes. For, the moment the rent is paid and sometimes before, the East Side plans for the wardrobe regardless of the larder. That Nellie may have a white graduation dress trimmed with innumerable flounces edged with "Val," and that Albert may have a new suit for confirmation, are every mother's absorbing anxieties, and the entrancing result is that even the tenement babies in New York are stylish despite dirt and shabbiness.

Now, Marie (christened Mary) Ramsay, whose brown curls bobbed under a

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