The Argosy, Vol. XXIV No. 2 — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

294 | A TRADE DOLLAR TRAGEDY. and a low necked shirt. I always feel like asking him out of the frame and kicking him as a consummate ass; but he is the man Julia loved—loves ! And she has an odd fancy that twenty years later she is still married to him. It would seem a pity to try to undeceive her ; besides, you couldn’t doit. A woman always fancies that the man she loved must be equally fascinating to all her sex. It might be flattering, if it were not so ridiculous, to be hedged about with conjugal solicitude when a man comes to forty, fatherhood, and general commonplaceness. | This last spring Jim Reynolds came down to Salaville to make us a short visit. I knew perfectly well why he came. Mary Marston was staying at her grandfather’s just across the way, and she and Jim were violently in love with each other, in the hot headed way of a boy and gitl.. .He-is twenty four, and she is nineteen, and the prettiest girl I ever saw. The Marstons and the Reynoldses have not been friends since the great law suit about the mills ten years ago, and any question of a marriage be- tween the two was not to be entertained for a single moment, as long as Jim was dependent upon his father-for support. He was making preparations for going into one of the mills, and these two young geese dreamed dreams about a day of love in a cottage with the usual accompaniments. Jim had confided the whole story to me. It would have been more natural for him to tell it to Julia, but she never had liked the lad’s mother, whom she called a ‘‘married flirt,’ and some of her resentment seemed to go to Jim. Then, too, the Marstons were dear friends of hers, and she would certainly have felt it her duty to let a little distilled drop of warning fall into the ears of somebody, had she known that Jim and Mary were engaged. She never suspected it. Jim gave it out that he came down to get a prac- tical knowledge of the workings of a factory from me, and Mary was on a demure visit to her grandfather, who was old and good natured, and buried in his library, just across the street. The lovers had a delightful time, wandering in the fields about Salaville, and exploring the roads for miles around. I used to start out in the morning, taking Jim in my buggy factoryward. He would leave me at the gate of the works, and drive back toward town: ‘Ten to one Miss Marston would be strolling along the road outside of town, and could be induced to take the seat by Jim’s side and go fora drive. My Kentucky mare, Betty B., was a famous traveler, and cared nothing for dust and heat and miles ; and it is my firm conviction, based upon observation and past—long past—experience, that these two young people never knew such things existed. Late at night, after Mary was shut up in her little white room across the way, Jim would sit out on the veranda with me, and, while I smoked, he lifted up his voice in praise of his divinity. One morning, at breakfast, Julia came down a little late. Johnny had been ailing the night before from a superfluity of sour cherries, and my wife had left me to my slumbers and had spent the night in the nursery. .As she came in, I noticed an unusual tightness about her upper lip, It seemed to 5 =) icbooks.com