Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 2 — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

BLESSED ARE THE MEEK. _— her. She had always thought she would be ready to give up her husband if anything like this came to pass. Now she wanted to fight for him—fight to keep him and his love. : Who was this woman who dared to carry her husband’s name and address with her? Some Amazon doubtless—the kind of wom- an whom Dora had instinctively known her husband should have chosen instead of her- self. Well, she’d find out for sure! Her first step must be to get that bag. Elmsville, telephonic inquiry revealed, was a village forty miles from the city on a trolley line. There was a limited car at noon. She could get to Elmsville at two o’clock. Very good. : She stepped from the car at exactly two and a taxi driver informed her that the Biggs home was three miles out in the country. He would take her out there for two dollars and a half and wait twenty minutes for her while she transacted her business with the Biggses. | She was put down in front of a cottage standing back from the dirt road. An aged man was sitting on the front porch when she went up the path. He acknowledged that he was Mr. Biggs. Mrs. Williamson said she had come in response to Mr. Biggs’s letter to Mr. Williamson about the hand- bag. ‘Oh, ma,” Mr. Biggs called. Ma Biggs opened the screen door and came out on the porch. She was an over- flowing woman with a placid manner, a winning smile, and an abundance of silver hair. “This is Mrs. Williamson come for that handbag, ma,” Biggs said. ‘‘ You got it, ain’t you?”’ “Set down, my dear,” said Mrs. Biggs. “Well, have you got the taxi waitin’? Now you send it away and pa will take you up to the car. There is no use in you leavin’ here for an hour and a half. If you left in ten minutes you could get the local car back to town. If you wait for an hour and a half, you can get the limited. The limited will get you in almost as soon as the local. You might better sit out here in the cool than in a poky car.” | 250 She lifted her voice so that it would carry to the driver of the taxi and said authori- tatively: “You run along. you any longer.” Dora had given him his two dollars and a half and he now waved his hand and sped away. Mrs. Biggs returned to the house and came back with milk and bread and peaches and cake on a tray. “You must be fagged out,” she said. “Riding always makes me hungry. You eat that and I’ll get the bag for you.” Mrs. Williamson had eaten nothing since she had had early breakfast with her hus- band and not much then because of his grouchiness. The food was delicious and she ate all of it. She declined another help- ing which the generous Mrs. Biggs offered her. : Her mind was on the handbag. She wanted to glimpse the writing on the card. She was almost as eager to see it as if it would lead her directly to the writer. But Mrs. Biggs was not to be hurried. She deposited her bulk in a big rocking-chair and softly rocked forward and back. “T took it for granted you was from the city,” she said. “From the city, yes,” Dora answered mechanically. She wondered anew just what her hus- band’s clandestine correspondent was like. A big woman doubiless, to match Henry. Yes, she would be a big woman, a hand- some woman, not a mere pretty doll. “We're going to move into the city,” Mrs. Biggs was going on. ‘“ We’ve sold the farm here. Well, it was quite a wrench, for the place has been in the hands of Mr. Biggs’s folks for "most a century. But we couldn’t stand off when they offered us the price—five hundred dollars an acre and there’s nigh a hundred acres. Nearly fifty thousand dollars we got right in a big bank in the city. “My! Real estate is the thing to make money on. Why, twenty years ago you could of bought the place, if we wanted to sell, for seven thousand dollars. ‘Well, it’s going to be a great country out here in a few years. There ain’t so The lady don’t want EOLPMIE LOOKS (E@)