Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

WHISPERING ROCK, lowed her gaze over the wooded country as he spoke. Jacqueline stretched her arms and took another full breath of the crisp mountain — She turned to him her flushed, face air. with the laughing eyes now reflecting some- thing deeper— ‘You bet!” From her it wasn’t slangy, for nowhere in her was there a discord. In another girl such an abundance of energy, of light-hearted abandon, might have been tomboyish; but not in Jacqueline. * She picked up her own hand-bag, and Doro- thy’s; she had a way like that of mothering Dorothy who in her setting against Jacque- line seemed all the more timid. “Vou bet!” she laughed again. “If I didn’t get back to my hills often enough, I— Id die!” Motioning to the engineer to go ahead, the conductor looked about the narrow platform and beyond into the hamlet street. ‘“‘ No one to meet you, Jack?” he queried as he swung aboard. She shook her head. “No. We came a day ahead—to sur- prise them.” She laid down a bag to wave to him. “ We’re going to walk. By-by. You can take us back next week.” Her glance caressingly on the hills she loved, the girl stood until the laboring train, with its ancient locomotive puffing furiously on the upgrade, had wound round a mountain shoulder. The diminishing sound of the rattling rods and escaping steam aroused her. With a sigh she came out of her reverie. “Come, Dot.- walk it.” She SIEBPGE out but her chum halted her.. “Tt’s late, Jack.” Dorothy regarded the cloudy sky apprehensively. ‘It'll soon be dark. Hadn’t we better get some one to drive us over?”’ ; | Jacqueline shrugged with a suggestion of impatience—Dot’s timidity was annoying at times. What though it did become dark before they reached home? She had been looking forward to this walk since she and Dot had left school in Boston for the Thanksgiving holiday. She wanted to revel in the quiet, to swing along through It'll take us an hour to 511 the woods, and know again the solitude of her hills. ‘They always were her own hills, to Jacqueline. ‘““We shouldn’t have come without send- ing word,” insisted Dorothy. “ Let’s tele- phone, and—” “We'll walk,” said Jacqueline and while she smiled her jaw set so that her com- panion knew the matter was decided. “It’s going to storm,” said Dot in ae protest. Jacqueline looked at the lowering sky and nodded emphatically— “I hope it does,” she declared, and laughed. ‘“ The sheltered life is all right, but it does get a little monotonous. I’d like to lean against a good old-fashioned storm. Hope it pours.” Together they made off down the road, Jacqueline tingling to step out with long, free stride, but forced to regulate her pace to that of her smaller, less robust chum. Their homes were two miles away. They should arrive about dinner time, and she had a pleasurable anticipation of her greet- ing—a mixture of scolding for not having had her father meet her, and of surprised joy over her arrival a day earlier, which meant that she would be twenty-four hours more with them. With that thought her gaze turned to Dorothy. She wondered whether Dot’s homecoming would be as happy. If Dot’s father was there, she doubted it. She hoped he would not—he seldom was home, and, like every one else, Jacqueline knew vaguely that there was something mys- terious about his comings and goings. “Your dad home, Dot?” she asked casually. They didn’t often refer to Lons< dale as they did to Jacqueline’s father. Since they had grown older—in the last couple of years since they were fourteen or thereabout, they had realized that there was reason for the shadow that seemed to hang over the Lonsdale home. Something of the somberness that was perpetually in the features of her mother came to Dorothy. She bit her lip at this apparent reading of her thought. ‘““T don’t know—mother didn’t say.” Jacqueline hastened to lift the other girl’s depression. (Cl QO) mn NOOK