Adventure Magazine Cover, December 10, 1922 — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

Minerva’s Treasure Dockery had never heard of the former objection, and he didn’t think of the latter. The immediate object at hand was to get ee at the earliest moment, and he id it. =») ONE night in Boston, after a rather Cy) inebriate year, John Dockery took =a unto himself a wife. ment and Misererel Oh, it’s all right to get married, per- haps, if one is well-supplied with funds and bored with everything; or if one is com- pletely and actually in love—but Charlotte! Charlotte was one of these “helpless” women. She whined all the time. [If she could only have done something—if she’d been on the stage, or been a stenographer, or played the piano a little, or something; but all she could do or cared about was going somewhere to dance and be enter- tained, high-toning the waiters, and being admired and longed for. And in the end she whined herself into Dockery’s tremendous arms. However, as a certain shrewd lady used to say chidingly, “Well, if he likes her, why do you butt in?” Which is very reasonable, for Dockery was irrevocably gone. Dockery had had rather soft going of it in the last year. He had been living at the Thorndyke, chumming around with some ex-Navy friends and, in a matter-of-fact sort of way, doing the town. Then, the day after cashing in the last pearl, some one introduced him to Charlotte, after a great amount of press-agenting on both sides. Charlotte had heard nothing for a week but stories of the rich, blond giant, and Dockery was overwhelmed with tales of the dazzling belle of Back Bay. So they were all prepared for each other and simply had to fall in love. Then, when Charlotte was backward and failed to smile broadly enough on his suit, Dockery, over a dinner table @ deux, unfolded his story. He didn’t tell it very well, or at least he didn’t tell it very graphically, for about all one learned was of a charming voyage with untold wealth at the other end. And which, under the circumstances, was sufficient, for Charlotte had plenty of imagination, espe- cially along the lines of motors, country houses and silver foxes. After that, matters began to look up for Dockery. ‘There even appeared to be a chance of winning this delightful creature Matheureuse-. 93 for his bride. Later, after many cabareting evenings, and many poorly veiled aspersions about badly fitting evening clothes, which did not register on Dockery, he presented the momentous question. Would she? Huh! So the little coterie of well-wishers saw them out of the South Station with much merry-making and admonitions to hurry back. And it’s dead certain no one knew where this one particular bride and groom were going to honeymoon. For Charlotte had forgotten the name of the place when she whispered the plans to jealous ears, and it wouldn’t have made any difference any- way, because none of them had ever heard of the Minerva Reefs. The couple pulled into Chicago in a storm of tears. They pulled in and out of Kansas City in a storm of tears. Likewise across Kansas and in and out of Denver, and like- wise into San Francisco. Dockery was having misgivings. He was up to most things and was always willing to take a chance, but this continual crying and stamping of feet—this was bad for the morale. “Jawwn,”’ Charlotte would say, “why can’t I buy my boating-outfit here instead of waiting till we are ’way out there where I know they haven’t anything.” Or— “You might at least ask the conductor if he can wait while I run in the station and send a wire. We’re rich, aren’t we?” Charlotte had been to Nantasket many times, and to Marblehead a half a dozen times, to Nahant twice, and even to New York, once. “T don’t want to have lunch sent in to the drawing room,” she would say; or, “TI want to eat in here; there’s nobody attrac- tive looking out in that dining-car.” And so on and on. Right outside the Golden Gate the steamer Tahiti, bound for Tahiti, turned her nose south into a bad chop. At the end of four days this had reduced Charlotte to a moan from the bunk and had given Dockery a chance to sit in the smoking-room and think it all over at his leisure. Unfortu- nately, though, the weather got better, and Charlotte swept amain. “Oh, I wish I hadn’t done it,” she raved. “You lied to me. You told me about the beautiful trip we would have, and all it’s done is nearly kill me. Why didn’t I stay _ co comicbooks ; r + r