The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 2 — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

I. was sitting up with his girl. He had come out of the dusk and snow to find her waiting for him in her wine-colored silk, with the base burner in the parlor glowing red-hot behind its mica windows and a warm supper of strictly home manufacture on the dining- room table. There were fried chicken, home-made bread, unstamped butter, gravy, mashed potatoes, cake and jelly, with half-and-half to top off on. It was a hearty, filling meal, just the supper for a hungry man, and as Joe ate it, Amelia hovering near, he thought over and over how fine it would be to marry a girl who could cook like that. The girl smiled demurely at his bluff, awkward compliments and after he had finished she took the dishes away out of sight to the kitchen, and was busy there for some time while there- floated out to him the homely clatter of “ redding u Be "That finished, she came back to the parlor and the two settled themselves for the evening’s courting. i was Sunday night, and Joe Kenagy Maud Springer Nesom ‘“'Where’s the folks?” Joe asked sud- denly, and Amelia blushed to her finger- nails. “They had to go down to Cordy’s,” she explained. ‘ She’s sick,” she added, all the time deeper tinges of red dying her lovely face and her head sinking lower and lower to the bosom of her wine- colored silk dress. : “Well, that’s fine,” the young man shouted gleefully, drawing his rocker one hitch closer to the chair of Amelia. “There won’t be anybody to bother us, then,” he added with extreme satisfac- tion. Not that anybody ever did bother Joe and Amelia. It was an understood thing with Amelia’s parents and they were glad to give her young man all the leeway he wanted in the courting of their daughter. Joe had+a farm, and was steady. The night wore on. Amelia was shy, but Joe liked the shy kind. He compared his companion favorably with a certain girl he had seen that very afternoon on his way to his sweetheart’s home. This other girl seemeg@ bold to Joe; she had a fashion of looking him straight in the eye and talking to him 327 / COMMICLOOOK (C@