The Argosy, Volume XLIV — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

THE FATAL PHOTO. If those blessed old busybodies knew that matters were settled between us, they would have tormented us until we were married, even if I had to give up my New York career and return to Hotchkisville and work in the grocery! The subject of the photographs was dropped, but the instant the old man had trotted out of the room on his way to the station and the train, I seized the offending picture and buried it be- neath a mess of papers and books in the hottom drawer of the great wardrobe which held both Jackson’s and my “best bib and tuckers.” He called them our “ giddy shells.” And what should happen that very evening but that he took it into his head to rummage for something in that drawer and fish out the photo. He glanced quickly at the mantel, where I had rearranged the pictures, and missed the one in his hand. “Gee, that gave me a shock!” he said. ‘1 thought you had another photo of the beauty and was hiding it away. Don’t be an ass, Joe. It’s the handsomest of the lot. Put it up there where it belongs,” and I meekly obeyed, feeling that I really was behaving fool- ishly. : lit would have been difficult to ex- plain to Uncle Peleg how I came into possession of it, but the he was told now, and I might as well stand for it if occasion required. But I determined that Aunt Maria should never see that picture, and, oddly enough, she didn’t, though I knew that Uncle Peleg went home primed to the muzzle with the idea of telling her about it. Before the time came around for her next flight city- ward, Jackson went off on an extended trip through the central States. He had left me the itinerary of his journey, and I wrote him a line or two about every day. But one day, being in a hurry and unable to write, I seized that photo from the shelf, and, for a joke, bundled it up in a sealed package and sent it to him. “He’s so stuck on the confounded thing, he can have it out there in Osh- kosh, or wherever he is,” I said, and thought no more about it. Two days later Aunt Maria stalked 121 in upon me. Now, she had never come before without giving me ample notice. The fatal photo was working its de- moniac will upon my heretofore trust- ing relatives. I saw her eye on the row of pictures adorning the mantel while she was still greeting me. There was dear little Amy in her old place of honor, and the dashing blonde in the striking dress, which I guarantee that old busybody, Uncle Peleg, had harped on every day for a month, was not in evidence. Aunt Maria even went to the shelf before she left, and took each photo in her hand to examine it, for she is growing near-sighted. I was calm, and rejoiced to think of the row there was brewing for Uncle Peleg. He would receive a severe lec- ture for maligning his nephew, and [ thought the old fellow deserved it! But when Jackson finally returned from his trip he said never a word about the photo. He arrived a little ahead of his schedule, and for several days after he came the postman brought in mail for him that had fol- lowed his track from town to town. I[ piled it all on his dresser. And so he vastly astonished me one evening by walking out of his bedroom with that photograph in his hand. Again his gaze sought the mantel, and he saw that the card he held was really the one that had stood there. “ By cripes!” he exclaimed. “ You'll give me heart disease yet. I thought somebody had sent me another photo of the Unknown. Youw’re a _ villain, Joe!’ and he considered it merely a harmless piece of lunacy on my part, instead of an attempt to really get rid of the offending picture. Now, there was one of the Hotch- kisville folk (beside Amy) that I was always glad to welcome at my diggings. That was Fred Marshall. He was Amy’s blood cousin, and a mighty nice fellow into the bargain. . But he fell in on me at his next visit just when I was preparing for the an- nual advent of the ‘painters and paper hangers. They were coming in the morning, and I was trying to get things ‘stacked away out of the insistent reach of paint and paste, which. I have no- ticed, has a faculty for dripping into (GO) MICOOO COL