Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 3 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

366 song she once had been compelled to learn to lead a tartan-clad burlesque chorus: “Tike dew on the gowan lying, Is the fa’ o’ her fairy feet, — And like winds in summer sighing, Her voice is low and sweet; Her voice is low and sweet, And she’s a’ the world to me, And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me down and dee.” The doctor stood with his face averted from the singer. Polly was oblivious of him until the legato and minor cadence of the fervid avowal of endless devotion was completed. Then she waited until he slowly turned, and in great thankfulness, said: “Thank God! Then I didn’t ruin it!” “No, Doc; you didn’t exactly ruin it!” laughed Polly. Then she went to him and very soberly requested: ““T want to kiss you, Doc, before I tell you something.” | The doctor leaned his grizzled cheek to accept her caress, and Polly penitently made her confession: “T’ye always been a cheat and fraud, Doc. I’ve cheated you, too; an’ you’ve been *bout the best friend I ever had. I never had no voice! I wasn’t nothing but a low-down, cheap burlesque prim. I showed my legs, an’ they was the only thing that got me by. I wanted to sing— God knows how I wanted to sing! But I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. A man told me once that I was like a swan: a beautiful bird, but without any voice. An’ you thought.I amounted to something! An’ you’ve been worryin’ ’cause you was afraid you spoiled my voice! It was dirt mean of me to cheat you like that, Doc!” Her contrition was abject, and the doc-: tor comforted her with a hand on her shoulder, as he exclaimed: cake hen I have given you a voice instead of robbing you of one!”’ a That’s exactly what you’ve done, you clumsy old sawbones!”’ ‘And now you can go back to the stage and become famous, and the Bon Ton will lose a mighty good clerk.” “Not too fast, Doc! I ain’t goin’ back —not yet for awhile. ‘You told me once THE ARGOSY. the Bon Ton clerks usually got married, and I ain’t never tried bein’ married yet. I kind o’ like to try everything once.” “But that voice! You owe that to the world!” “The world’s collected every cent this dollar bill owes it,” asserted Polly. “I had one taste of ambition and it didn’t taste very good, so I guess I'll pass up any more full-sheet fame.” “I wouldn’t be too certain that my debt to the world had been entirely canceled if I were you,” cautioned the physician in a grave tone, : “Well, anyway, I ain’t goin’ to pay the rest of it the way I started to,” said Polly. ‘“But what are you goin’ to do to me for actin’ a lie to you an’ makin’ you think I was a great singer an’ actress?” ‘“Don’t be too certain that I haven’t known all the time just who and what you were. JI didn’t know that you couldn’t sing, but the rest of it wasn’t such a secret as you imagined.” Polly had a revelation of the purpose of the doctor’s long and kindly moral lessons. She was wilfully and angrily resentful. “Then you’ve been tryin’ to reform me!” she snapped. ‘No; just been performing operations on you: cutting out fungus growths,” the doc- tor quietly admitted. “Why didn’t you tell me you was tryin’ to make me over to suit your goody-goody ideas?” questioned the girl, her senseless pique steadily growing. ‘““ Because persons under an anesthetic suffer less pain than those who are con- scious.” Polly was overwhelmed with a sudden rage, born of the nervous excitement into which the discovery of her surprising gift had thrown her. She was blindly unrea- soning; utterly rebellious at this moralist who had presumed to interfere with her complacency, and utterly beside herself in her conception that this man had attempted to alter her character and thus had implied a criticism of her former state. In a reversion to vulgarity, she swept from the room with a parting hissed defiance: “To hell with you and your operations!” Her later regret at this outburst was i CORICLOOO© S (C@)