Judge — October 2, 1915 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

M AN!” NICHOLS “SOME By W. T. IOMMY TAYLOR, touring alone, caught a captivating glimpse Ts: Margaret Boylston, reading on the porch of “Fernledge Farm.” More important things happen from wakefulness than from slumber at the switch; though less is said about them in the papers. Tommy, glimpsing, switched his car from the high- way. In five minutes he had engaged board, indefinitely; in six, he was on the porch. “Jolly spot!” was his over- ture. “Great view, bully sun- shine, air better’n any bracer.” Miss Boylston became offi- cially aware of the stranger’s existence. She lowered her pamphlet — Tommy noted it was full of tabulations; she rose. “Apparently it sometimes causes undue nerve strain,” she remarked stiffly. ‘Also this latitude has many cold waves. Pardon me!”’ She swept by him, like an offended goddess and true daughter of Boston, in whom rage takes the form of refrigeration. Keep a cat in cold storage, and he grows a coat like a polar bear’s. In a week Tommy ceased even to mind the chill. Mean- while, Miss Boylston had declined three motor rides, four strolls in the woods, and two canoe duets. With reason she told herself it was an outrage to be so pestered, pursued, dogged and hounded. Owning a fine New England con- science, she had had a sense of guilt, anyway, in taking a vacation from her settlement work, and had meant to pay penance by cramming all the latest social surveys. But how could one improve the hour, when one continually was beset and besought to consider it a shining hour, and frivol it away in “Chuck the highbrowing!” Tommy urged. “Come on and play!” From pure perversity of human nature Miss Boylston had to fight inexplicable temptation. “Do you good to break training,” Tommy declared. “Do me good, too. Say, what’s the matter with being a life-saver?” Whereat, there being something curiously engaging in Tom. ’s smile, the voice of Conscience spoke in hot haste: jt n't a still, small voice; it fairly megaphoned. » Miss Boylston straighter. “This is outrageous,” she said icily. “It is altogether unpar- donable. “Meaning my horning in?” queried Tommy. A fine line showed in Miss Boylston’s brow. “Meaning your utter disregard of the serious things of life, your failure to see that for a real man this world is full of work, crying to be done.” “Oh!” said Tommy. There was a new note in his voice, and the engaging smile faded. Eustace came back, annoyed and fuming mildly. There was nobody back of the barn. It was impossible to understand how such a report could have originated. But to resume the discussion— and he dropped into the chair beside Miss Boylston’s. Tommy took a turn the length of the porch and back. before the young woman from Boston. “Pardon me!” he said with unwonted gravity. “You know I was telling you yesterday about a spot where there’s late mountain laurel in bloom. It won’t last much longer. I'd like to show it to you to-day—now.” Miss Boylston, who also knew where that clump of laurel was, saw fit to punish Tommy by flatly declining his escort and leading Eustace to pluck the blossoms from their well-nigh inaccessible sanctuary. Eustace, with no very good will, essayed to scale the ledges, slipped and fell headlong. As he lay insensible, and as Miss Boyl- ston began to experience the poignant emotions of a Lady Cain, Tommy providentially popped out of the bushes. To her amazement Tommy took charge. He brought help from the farm house; summoned the local doctor; heard his demand He halted talk or tennis? “I have my work; you interrupt it abominably,” she told Tommy. “Are you never in earnest?” Tommy grinned, oddly. ‘“‘ Not often. So, when I am, I’ve scads of stored-up energy. Get me?” She frowned. ‘You won't take the trouble even to use English?” “Why should I?” said Tommy. “I’ve something better to think of.” Miss Boylston, defeated, yet had a queer tingle of enjoyment. Wherefore, that conscience of hers pricking her anew,she warmly welcomed the arriving Eustace Roberts, a rising and solemn young missioner of the uplift, who knew more about the necessary calorics in a balanced ration for a seamstress working nine hours a day on three-dollar pants, than anybody else this side of Berlin. Miss Boylston gave him an afternoon— or, at least, she did until Tommy ob- truded himself with a mendacious rumor that two strange men wished to sce Mr. Roberts back of the barn. Eustace guilelessly “bit’—and Miss Boylston bit her lip. Stranger—Could I get an opinion from you for $20? = A Woman lawyer—Why—er—yes; but of course it wouldn't be much of an opinion! comicbooks.com