Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 162: what you’re looking at

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

952 tunity or later be dogged into a union with some man she might abominate. She had often looked forward with ter- ror to Harry’s proposal. But she had borne it, fortified in her sad illusion. Maybe she could bear her life, strengthened by some- thing of the same somber memories of the past. . And so Edna Gilpin saw her marriage draw nearer, her head still full of dreams of Walter. Then one day she saw him! She was returning alone through the pas- ‘ture with the cattle as the freight train lumbered by, long and slow. Walking along the top, jaunty as of old, was-the brakeman she had given up as gone from out her life forever. He waved and shouted at her as if it were but yesterday when they had seen each other last. One moment she perceived him above a box car, then saw him clambering down its side as it came abreast of her. He swung to the ground and hurried across the tracks to the fence. “Why did you go away and never tell me, or let me hear from you in all that time?” she asked. In abrupt words he explained. He had been called to California where his father was very ill. He had to stay a long time. But always he missed “ his little girl,” and he returned East as soon as his parent was on the way to recovery. “Why didn’t you write?” she insisted severely, but with forgiveness in her eyes. ‘Never was any hand to write,” the brakeman explained, then asked, grinning: “ You aren’t married yet?” ‘“No,” replied Edna, blushing, “ only our hired man wants me to marry him, but I don’t know.” Walter ran toward the track and caught the rail of the caboose platform, swinging himself upon the step. He was gone and all at once the flush of the girl’s delight turned to a nausea of dis- appointment. She had told the trainman she didn’t know, but she did know. She would have to marry Harry Allerman. She couldn’t face him and her mother and tell them she had changed her mind. It was too late. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. With a heavy heart Edna set off behind the cows. V. EpDNA GILPIN sat upon a step of the back porch staring moodily into the cloudy twi- light. She had just finished washing the dishes after the early Sunday supper. A cold wind whined through the grove, whip- ping the dead leaves over the yard and down the long, black road. Somewhere out beyond the pasture sound- ed the heralding whistle of the freight train, an hour overdue. But Walter was not aboard it, had not been for a week. He was a brakeman on the passenger train, which would not pass for hours, would whirl by in the dark when she could not see him. She pondered Walter’s suggestion made the last time she saw and talked with him, his reckless proposal that she wait for his new train at the siding where it stopped for the St. Paul mail, and go with him to the end of his run and marry him. But she dismissed the notion of eloping as impos- sible as she had dismissed it every time it came into her mind. Harry emerged from somewhere. She watched him carrying the last of the milk into the dairy shed, watched him latch the door and walk to where she sat. Stoop- ing down, he put his arms about her and gently drew her to her feet. “Your coat is all wet from milk you’ve spilled on it,” she grumbled, impatient at this sentimental mooning. He murmured apologetically, but con- tinued to cling to her, kissing her softly, a pathetic expression in his eyes. Edna shivered with a violent distaste of him, an aversion that had come upon her all at once after seeing Walter again. Since then she no longer felt her old lover vicari- ously at hand as her husband-to-be ca- ressed and fondled her. The feel of Harry’s arms, his lips was abhorrent now. She gazed over his shoulder into the dim gray fields. Revulsion swept her at thought of this marriage. She had delayed it time after time until she could delay it no longer. Even the hitherto complaisant suitor was beginning to show the insistence of her oO COMICLOOKS.CO