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MISS CRANE’S CHANCE:
SYNOPSIS.
Miss Crane’s Chance is the story of a woman who
lost all her income within the limit of a month. The
failure of her railroad dividends and mining stock
left het. financially stranded except that she still owned
a heavily mortgaged home, and had a trifle over SIO.OO
in her purse. She was a highly cultured woman, be
loved, influential and useful—and more than one chap
ter is devoted to what she thought and how she acted
when fate brought her to her knees under the Juniper
tree. She did not confide the story of her disaster to
anybody, but one day the president of the local bank
died —and it was discovered that he had left all of his
great wealth to her.
Mrs. More, her friend, is an original woman, and
Nell Crane, her niece, is as charming as unique
■ i | ISS CRANE came back to the libra
ry, as Nell finished her soliloquy
rZg before the panel mirror, and she
<0 paused on the threshhold to enjoy
the charm which the girl’s pres
ence added to the room. Her mere
/L being there was like a colorful
—, note of joy in a stately church
1 chant. The warmth and gladness
of her youth and personality were already be
ginning to vibrate through the grand old
house. Her little gray kid gloves and purse
of silver net lay beside the great crystal bowl
of yellow jonquils on the center table, and
her discarded cap and furs showed with pic
turesque effect among the rainbow hues of the
cushions, on a dark divan in one corner. Miss
Crane placed her key basket, tied with lilac
ribbon, on the high mantel, and some reflec
tion of the beautiful things she had been think
ing Showed in her face as she turned towards
her neice. “Come on, Nell,” she said, quietly,
“and let’s go up stairs. I have ordered the
carriage for our drive, but we will have time.
I think, for you to select your room before we
go. I feel a little curious,” she continued, as
she took her niece’s arm and they turned to
wards the grand stairway, “to know which
room will be your choice. I have already se
lected one for your, and I am anxious to see if
my guess about your taste will be corroborat
ed.” Nell flashed a smile from her blue grey
eyes at her aunt, as she gently patted the hand
on her arm.
“You used to say, Carissima, that you never
could anticipate me, because I invariably did
the unexpected thing.”
“Well, that was true of you,” Miss Crane
admitted, “in your extreme youth.”
“But now that I have arrived,” the girl
affirmed, “at years of discretion, you hope bet
ter things of me. That, indeed, lam no longer
a butterfly, floating around in alluring circles,
and giving the one who anxiously watched my
brilliant gyrations, no hint of where I might
be expected to alight.”
“Exactly,” Miss Crane answered, as they
reached the head of the stairway. “But you
must remember,” she continued, as she open
ed the folding doors of the back hall, “that
whether as a butterfly of society, or an inde
pendent young woman of business, you were
always the dearest thing on earth to the one
who anxiously watched you.”
“Thank, you,” Nell returned with a note of
deep feeling in her voice, “I don’t think the
gay butterfly, or the young business woman,
either, could have lived at all, if that conscious
ness had not been with her all the time.”
Miss Crane opened the door of the first room
on the right, whose walls were green, and the
furniture of mahogany, and Nell paused on the
threshhold.
“It is very elegant, Aunt Caro,” she said,
auietly, “but there is nothing here which ap
peals to me especially, except that picture of an
overturned basket of roses, framed in wood
over the mantel.”
CHAPTER VII.
The Golden Age for December 5, 1912.
Miss Crane shut the door, and opened an
other on the left of the hall. This revealed a
room furnished in rosewood, with oak colored
walls, and brown and gold rugs, and curtains
of brocaded velvet of the same shades, at the
windows. Nell sighed from the doorway.
“Harmonious,” she commented, briefly.
Miss Crane opened the doors of two more
rooms without eliciting any undue enthusiasm.
Then she led the way to the front hall, and
opened the door to a room entirely in white.
Nell paused by her aunt on the threshhold and
exclaimed, “This makes me think of a descrip
tion I read once of a beautiful girl in a mar
riage story—she was like this room, as ‘cold
and lovely as an arctic dream.’ It is a regular
North Pole creation, Aunt Caro, and needs
humanizing, a few color touches to make it
comfortable and habitable. That white iron
bedstead, and white bear-skin rug, and all the
rest of the accessories, give it a frozen effect.”
“It will look very different, Nell, this sum
mer, when the temperature rises to a hundred
in the shade.”
“Perhaps,” the girl replied, as her aunt
turned and opened another door. Nell threw
up both hands with a gesture of ecstasy, as she
looked into the interior of this room.
“Mine!” she exclaimed, “by every law of
personal right. For blue is my color, and this
room is nothing more nor less than a heavenly
dream.”
It did make you think of the land of the
sky, for everything was blue except the cream
colored ceiling and the rare rosewood furni
ture. Blue velvet curtains of costly brocade
hung from gilded rods at the windows, and a
blue Persian art square covered the floor al
most entirely. The chairs were upholstered
in blue, and a quaint sofa pushed against one
wall, was 'half covered in blue and gold striped
silk cushions. A small rosewood table between
the windows, held a blue bowl which was filled
with yellow jonquils, and a low rocker sat sug
gestively near it.
“Look at that card on the mantle,” Miss
Crane importuned with an eager expression.
The girl obeyed, and read:
“Miss Nell Crane’s room, with best wishes
for her happiness.”
Nell turned impulsively to her aunt, and put
her arms around her, as she kissed her.
“You dearest dear, how did you know?”
“By intuition,” Miss Crane returned with a
smile of satisfaction, “like women are sup
posed to know everything.”
The butler, as if he had surmised the right
time to appear, came to the open door of the
room, just at that moment, and announced that
the carriage was ready.
Miss Crane and her niece descended the
stairway in silence. They found Mrs. More in
the library, seated before the fire and embroid
ering leisurely.
“A woman and a needle,” Miss Crane said,
tentatively, “and a fire, would create, I think,
a home-like atmosphere in a barn.”
“Thanks; but I prefer this sort of barn to
some which have come under my limited ob
servation. But you haven’t heard the latest,”
Mrs More continued as she drew a long crim
son thread through the heart of a rose, “about
our chief family counselor, have you?”
“Wayland Hamilton?” Miss Crane answered
in a puzzled tone. “I have heard nothing of
special interest about him lately, Gertrude —
why?”
“Well, the chief counselor scores,” she said,
as she looked up with her flashing smile, and
held her needle poised in the air for a mo
ment, “Gordon told me the story last night,
and I laughed until I cried; indeed, the whole
street is talking about it. Os course, I can
not tell it like Gordon, but I have at least the
power to outline it for you.
“It seems that our Mr. Hamilton had a client
who was exceedingly particular about abstracts
By ODESSA STRICKLAND PAYNE
of title. He is a Georgian, and grim as Gibral
ter in his deductions and conclusions. He had
Mr. Hamilton to have an abstract of title run
for a plantation in North Georgia, it seems,
and when he came to the office, he put on his
spectacles, and read over the abstract with
great carefulness. Well, it seems that this
man, the grim client observed at last,” got his
title from the state of Georgia.”
“Yes,” Mr. Hamilton replied.
“But I want to know,” the client insisted,
“who the state of Georgia got the title from —
the record does not show.”
“The Indians,” Mr. Hamilton hazzarded.
“Then, who do you think, sir,” persisted the
hard-headed old man, “gave the title to the
Indians?”
“The Almighty,” Mr. Hamilton answered, as
he got up from his desk, and closed the inter
view.
Miss Crane smiled broadly into the panel
mirror before which she stood adjusting her
toque, while Nell applauded softly with her
gloved hands in the background.
“Are you sure that that is the truth, Ger
trude?” Miss Crane questioned, as s'he picked
up her muff from a chair, “or is it a newspaper
replica, which Gordon has readjusted to prove
Wayland Hamilton’s resourcefulness?”
“I am sure I do not know,” Mrs. More an
swered, as she went on quietly with her em
broidery, “it is funny, and the climax con
vincing, at any rate —isn’t it Nell?”
“Decidedly,” the girl replied, as she tied a
veil of silver gauze over her fur cap. “And I
do not suppose that the obdurate client will
ask any more questions about that title at
least. ’ ’
“I am going to see Mrs. Hamilton Parkhurst,
and some other friends,” Miss Crane explained
to the industrious lady by the fire, as she and
her niece turned to leave the room.
“Oh, you are; wait a moment,” Mrs More
importuned. She put down her work and then
left the room and went flying up the grand
stairway, like a girl. When she came back,
there was a flush on her cheek, and a sparkle
in her eyes, which made her'dazzling to look
at, in her dainty pink house gown. She car
ried a long white box in her hands.
“Please give this,” she said, simply, “to
Mrs. Marion Parkhurst, with my best love.”
“All right, Gertrude,” Miss Crane replied,
as she took the two-pound box of chocolate
bon-bons and pushed back the folding doors
into the great parlors. Mrs. More followed
them out to the columned front, and stood on
the steps, while Miss Crane and Nell climbed
into the carriage, then she waved them a grace
ful farewell, and went back to the library.
That night at ten o’clock, Nell Crane sat in
her own “sky-room,” as she had christened it,
in a rocking chair before a bright coal fire. She
had on a kimona that harmonized with the
blue of the walls, and there was a reflective
shadow on her face, as she gazed into the
flames.
“I wonder how it will seem,” she said, after
a long time of silent communion, “to be a lady
of leisure again, and not to have to go by the
clock and the bell to work every day? I won
der how it will feel to have the time to think
of myself as an individual again, and not be a
cog in a great whirring business wheel any
more? And yet, I would not be without the
experiences which have come to me from be
ing a vital part of the big world, for any con
sideration. Only I have been consciously
changed by personal contact with realities, for
I used to be an idealist, because I could not
well be anything else. Aunt Caroline reared
me in an atmosphere of high thinking, and if
it meant plain living sometimes, also, we both
were preserved somehow through it all, from
bitterness. But now, she has come at last into
her rights as a grandly endowed woman—the
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