Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

TARRAPIN The girl made no reply. Nothing but a nervous twisting of her fingers indicated that she had heard. Roone turned and looked at the girl, the light of extreme fondness glowing in his fine eyes. Then he tried again: ‘““Look here, Lois, I can’t talk to a girl who acts like she is deaf and dumb. I can’t ever talk to a woman and get any- where. Right now, I feel like a snake that’s got its tail in its mouth—just going round and round!” ‘What is it you think you want to try to say?” Lois asked with a sympathetic chuckle, as she rose and sat upon the arm of his chair, and placed her fingers in his thick white hair. “ Maybe I can help you to go straight,” The telephone rang. Lois, with a prayer of pure thankfulness, excused herself and hastened to answer. Two minutes later, she appeared, dressed to go out, “Miss Caby is taken quite sick again,” she announced, ‘‘ and she has asked me to come down there to her.” For a moment after Lois had gone, Roone was oppressed with a sense of failure and defeat. Then he thought of Miss Caby Proman, and brightened up. “Tm a fool,’ he reflected. ‘I might have known I could not talk to that girl. I'll get Old Flounce to talk to her!” CHAPTER V. ‘“ TO-MORROW NIGHT.” ISS CABY PROMAN had been Miss - Caby so long that many people had forgotten that she was a widow, and that somewhere in the world she possessed a son who was a bum, a tramp, or a wan-, dering boy of that general description. She was “ Miss Caby ” because for over thirty years she had been a school-teacher. That was the name by which the children called her, and as nearly every white child in Tickfall in the past thirty years had been taught by her, the title was of almost gen- eral application. Some of the older men who had con- stituted Miss Caby’s earliest pupils, called TOES. 169 her “ Old Flounce.” Years before when the streets of Tickfall were not paved, this young school-teacher had navigated the mud by wearing boots like a man. She concealed the boots under the long skirts of that period, and endeavored to effect a more complete concealment by wearing many frills around the bottom of her dress —hence her nickname. Old Flounce was as tall as an ordinary man, and there was much that was mascu- line in her appearance. She taught with authority and power. She was the intellec- tual light of Tickfall and took especial pride in the fact that she was the president of the Tickfall Dramatic Club. Several years before something had hap- pened in Miss Caby’s life which had given her a nervous shock. Nothing was known except that her son who had been away from home for years, had returned to Tick- fall and had remained two days and dis- appeared. Miss Caby had never been the same, from that day. Then had come the world war. It seemed to have the most tragic and dreadful in- fluence upon this teacher. Some surmised that her son had gone into the war, and then as time passed and Miss Caby’s con- dition grew more distressing, that the boy had been wounded or killed. But those who knew most of the woman’s unfortunate marriage and her worthless son asked no cuestions, and the others were not sutti- ciently interested to inquire. After the war, Miss Caby showed’ no improvement. Once when she was asked when last she had heard of her son, she answered: ‘“* Not since he came to see me last.” All that Miss Caby could wish her son had been, Manse Verdell was. He had been her pupil and in the development of his fine mind and the growth of ‘his*hand- some body, she had taken a real maternal interest. He was her own boy, dearer to her because his own mother was dead. For her, on his part, Manse had a sincere affec- tion. All her little business affairs, he con- ducted. Boylike, he showed his affection best by thinking up a thousand different ways to tease and annoy her. Miss Lois Roone had been especially COMMICLOOOkKS (C@)