The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 2 — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

206 the whole scene before her blurred in an iridescent mist of tears. The band was blaring “ The Girl I Left Behind Me”; the men were entraining, and a weeping chorus filled the background, but Ellen’s alert senses were not, as usual, on the job. 7 | “T’ll have to fake my copy,” the ruling passion asserted itself after a moment. ‘“T haven’t a single note!” Suddenly she heard her name spoken and glanced up to see Holt leaning from the nearest car-window. Keenly con- scious of her tear-stained face, she drew closer, 3 “By, dear,” she heard Holt say ten- derly, under his breath. “Ill think of you night and day. You won’t forget me?” “Not for a moment,” she promised. And she kept her word. As Holt glanced at the Jntelligencer next morning he guessed why Ellen had “had the sob-stunt wished on her.”’ Her “story”? was .admirably done. There was no conscious, deliberate attempt at pathos; the situation was not overplayed or overwritten; instead, there was a sim- ple, straightforward setting forth of facts, with a sympathy, sureness, and sin- cerity of touch that somehow appealed. It wasn’t at all the typical sob-story, but nevertheless ‘it brought a lump to the reader’s throat and a sudden mist to the eyes. “She knows how to write, bless her!” Holt conceded. ‘‘ Here’s hoping she'll write to me!” At about the same moment, Ellen, at her desk in her scrap of an office off the Intelligencer’s composing-room, was read- ing a penciled scrawl addressed to ‘‘ Miss Doris Dean, in care of Morning Intelli- gencer.” It began: DEAR: I’m afraid you're already beginning to re- gret your kindly impulse of this afternoon. Don’t! You wouldn’t if you guessed what it meant to me. I was desperate enough for THE ARGOSY, anything as I stood there alone waiting for the train—and you sent me away with a song in my heart, bless you! I promised I’d not try to discover your true identity and I won't, without your per- mission. But you surely won’t mind my writing to “ Doris Dean.’ Doesn’t she fur- nish advice to the love-lorn. I’m all of that! ‘I’m in love, dear Miss Dean” (that the proper way to do it?) “ with a young lady I’ve seen but once. To be quite frank, I fear she.doesn’t reciprocate. What should you advise me to do? Please answer in your very next issue.” Seriously, [ was bluer than the Mediter- ranean when you chanced along. I’d quar- reled with dad, who positively forbade my joining the cadet corps from the State uni- versity where I graduated. I stood for it till my twenty-first birthday arrived (a week ago), and celebrated by telling him, respectfully but firmly, that I meant to go io the front. He came back with the ulti- matum that if 1 went, 1 was no son of his. Nevertheless, as you know, I did it. So that’s why I was a lone, lorn rookie when you happened to see and feel sorry for me. It mayn’t be strictly conventional, but— won't you waive ceremony and write me now and then? MTI'll be pretty desolate, I fancy, and you can serve your country by boosting the spirits of an insignificant atom of the. National Defense. I haven’t gone in much for society since my college days. I’ve been slavishly busy learning to be dad’s understudy in the business, and I don’t know many girls. But if I weren’t afraid of sounding like a topical song or a Laura Jean Libbey hero, I'd say that there’s just one girl in the world for me. Pardon me if, like Romeo, I’m “too sud- den-bold,” and, in sweet charity’s name, send me a line to say you'll forgive—and not forget, Yours most gratefully, Howarp Ho vr. For a long time Ellen sat very still, her eyes fixed alternately on the letter before her and a folded square of linen beside it monogramed with an intricate 8) 5 SS A. Ree ‘JT sha’n’t answer it,” she decided pres- ently—Ellen was a person of quick deci- sions. “I think it’s straight—it must be —about the name. He looked honest, and he’s evidently young, but ‘I never believe ’em,’ as the Girl from Utah sang, and he may have a wife and a cherub or Go 0)(\) MUG S (C@