Life — August 7, 1902 — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

A Private Providence. " IRLS,” I said, “are queer things, but it's all a matter of getting ac- customed to them,” and 1 looked sideways at Curtis. We were sitting on the stone wall above the golf links, and both of us were smoking” pipes. Curtis was cutting at the daisies with a bras- sie, and did not seent to follow me very closely, but I had come out that afternoon with something to say, and Tmeant to say it, It would take some Jead- ing up to, but having thought the whole thing out, I was prepared to do it neatly “The clever ones are the worst,” I said. “For in- stance, there's Ethel.”” At that he jumped a little, and missed a daisy, but he cut it down savagely the next minute, while I stared away over the links. I wanted to slap him on the back, and say, “Come, old chap, let's talk it over quictly,” but I reflected in time on the delicacy of my own position. I really thought the world of Curtis. He had stood up for me like a man through my freshman year at college, and by sophomore year we were good friends, though he was in the law schoo) then ; that was why he was at Aunt Helen's that vacation, and also why I was so dis- turbed over the present business. “LT used to think that Ethel’s brains mightn’t be such a drawback,” I went on, once more cutting my eye at Curtis, He was certainly listening now. ‘Even after she went to college, she didn't scent 80 very different from other girls; and she could always hold her own at dances—more than hold it.” * You don't need to tell me that.” put in Curtis, dryly ; it was at a college dance that I first met Eth—Miss Warrington.” I remembered the circumstance, and the look of her dance-card afterwards, with every number split into halves and quar- ters. Some fellows had trouble with their sisters’ cards, but I never did with hers. (Except when seven fellows wanted the supper dance.) “But however well she may manage in “URES other respects,” I said in a generalizing tone, “ brains always play the deuce in the matter of a girl's—well—taking a fancy.” Rather red about the gills I was after that speech, for it seemed, us I got it out, a good deal clumsier and less diplomatic than I had intended ; but to my relief Curtis answered on the generalizing tone too, and said he thought a girl was all the better off for hav- ing a strong head to guide her heart. His voice was as steady as you please, but the daisy tops were flying at a tremendous rate just then. “Yes, but how does she use her head when the time comes?" I said. ** Does she choose a good all-round man, who has hard sense and is an honor to his friends, who can pull a stroke oar"—there I stuck for a minute, for Curtis was stroke in his class boat, and I didn’t want him to think I was personal—“‘and put the shot for a record ” —that would show him I was still dealing only in generalities, for old Curt never went in for field sports—* and play golf like a man, or does she take up with a cad in eye- glasses, who thinks that nine holes are enough for an afternoon?” Curtis dropped his brassie, took the pipe from his mouth, and sat staring into the bowl (where the fire was quite out) until I began to be afraid he hadn't been listening ; but presently he moistened his lips, and said in a shaky voice: Is—is it Jermyn?” So it was all up with the generalizing dodge. ‘Curt, old chap,” I said frankly, “it may be Jermyn, and it may not be, for all I positively know ; but of course he's beastly clever, and—well, I couldn't help speaking of the way the thing looks, toa fellow who knows something about girl After that we smoked ov for some ten minutes or so, or rather I smoked, and Cur- tis pulled hard at his unlit pipe, and then Curtis said he thought he would take a walk, and would I carry his clubs to the house. I sat on the wall, watching him stride away over the links, and wondering what made girls such fools. It was hard to realize that a sister of mine could snub a fellow like that, and waste her time on Jermyn—walking with him, talking with him, reading George Meredith and Maeter- linck with him—just because he had written a book, and was a literary swell. Of course, as Curtis was such a cateh, with his money aud his good looks, she kept him dangling to plague the other gizls ; she'd be jolly and friendly and kind one minute, and so haughty and cool the next as to drive him distracted. “But I think I've spiked your guns for once, Miss Ethel,” I muttered ; ‘as a rule, I don't interfere with your little games, but Mi you shan't draw Curtis on to propose, just for the fun of refusing him—no, ma'am With that I swung my legs over the wall, shouldered the clubs, and strolled across the lawn to the house. There I found Aunt Helen, very cool and quiet in the lib y, and I told her, over a big tumbler of iced stuff, what I had had to do. Aunt Helen is the sort of person you tell things to. She listened in her quiet way, looking a bit worried and yet (I almost thought) a bit amused too, as she asked me if Mr. Curtis wasn't big ugh to look out for himself. lexplained that although he was, of course, much older than I, still he had never cared much about girls—not that I cared about girls either, but the fact of ng a sister had given me the advantage of a chance to learn their ways. 1 might have said more, but just then the rest of the house party began to drop in—Ethel among th with Jermyn in her train—hot and thirsty from an efternoon on the Jinks, and clamoring for lemonades and things; 80 1 slipped into a chair near the door, ready to escape if little Miss Pa; me in, She was the giggling one. And before very long she came. though, strange to say, she wasn't giggling. She stopped on the sill, and shot out her words like bullets. “ Mr. Curtis says he is going home.” Everybody stopped talking, and Aunt Helen gave me one long look across the room, as much as to say: ‘Now you've done it. “On the six-fifteen train,” added Miss Page, as she dropped into a chair, and upon that all the girls began to buzz at once, ex- cept Ethel, who was busy with the loaf- sugar, and didn't seem to pay much atten- tion to the conversation, But Jermyn was not the maw to Jet her mind wander. He must have thought he had a masterful way with him, and he liked to make the girls believe that he could read their very souls. ‘And by the way, I should be sorry for the girl who had no more in her soul than Jermyn found there, for he made them all out arrant flirts aud schemers, and oddly enough they didn’t seem to mind. Most of them, that is, though I could have told him not to carry the thing too far with Ethel. But that day he seemed bent on doing it. “What, Miss Warrington,” he said, turn- ing to her, “Curtis going, and with his scalp on. too?" You see, he guessed that she hadn't had a chance to refuse him. “It can't be your fault, and yet I shouldn't have thought him the man to love and ride away.” “Well, Ethel, my dear,” thought I to myself, “if that's your clever man, give me a fool,” for plenty of fools would b comicbooks.com