The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 2 — page 148: what you’re looking at

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

330 these’d do. left home.” The girl gave a merry glance toward the trim kid gloves that encased the young man’s hands, but in an instant the merry look fled and another came in its place, a look of commiseration such as a warm-hearted child might give to a gutter-drenched kitten. Suddenly she was on her knees before him, pulling off the fastidious gloves and crying out in sympathy as the waxen flesh came to view. She brought coal-oil and rammed his stiff hands into it and held them there, in spite of the pain that warped his face as the blood slowly made its way back into the smitten members. “Oh, could anybody let anybody go -out on such a night as this?” She stopped short and busily applied herself to the injured hands. It wasn’t stormin’ when I “They’re not frozen,” she announced at last, when the patient was lying full length on a sofa drawn up to the fire. ‘But they would have been. It’s lucky you stopped. I’d hate to think of you, Joe, above all people, without any hands.” She turned away shuddering, and Joe, crushed and broken and bruised and wilted, was surprised to catch the glint of a tear in her humorous eye and a trace of the same tear in her sympathetic voice. So she bandaged up the broken hero. She fed him something warm and with her own hands took off his shoes and made him comfortable on the sofa. “T don’t think you’d better try to go up-stairs to bed,” she said finally. “It’s too cold up there and you’d get all chilled again. "You lie right here and I’ll sleep in Brother Jim’s room, so I can hear you if you want anything. I'll leave the door open, and don’t be afraid to call if you need me. Jim telephoned that he wouldn’t be home, so you'll have to call me if you do need anything. I’m the only person here.” “ Where’s Jim?” asked the young man. “He went to see his girl, and she THE ARGOSY. wouldn’t let him come home, not on such a night as this. Keep on wiggling your hands until you get sleepy. Good night.” Joe lay for a long time watching the anthracite coal glimmer behind its mica windows, so much like those of the other base burner down the road. He was floating in a sea of: peace and physical well-being. He had been sorely hurt, but one had drawn the sting and brought him solace and comfort. He thought of Amelia, and how shy she was, and how beautiful. And then he thought of the other girl he could hear moving softly about the bedroom at the end of the hall. A great wave of gratitude swept over him, that buried Amelia and her shyness and beauty quite out of sight. TIT. Tuey both slept. The glare of the caal died to a warm glow, fringed with pale ashes. The room grew darker and darker, and just when the light from the base burner had faded quite away another light, grayish in tinge and stealthy as a thief, stole in. But it did not disturb the sleeping young man under his blankets on the sofa behind the stove. Once in a while he would stir and half-open his eyes, then turn over for another long snooze. When he did finally get his sleep out the wintry sun was sending long shafts of golden light across the parlor carpet from beneath the drawn shades and far off where he knew the kitchen ought to be he could hear a girl’s voice singing happily. Otherwise the earth was still; the storm had passed away on the wings of the morning. And that is about all there is to it. Ex- cepting that Joe had to stop the next Sunday and show Mary how his hands were getting along. He did that the next Sunday, and the next, and the next, and the next. And each time he stayed so long that it was too late to go on and see Amelia. Poor Amelia! CORMICGLOoX< (C@