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NORTH GEORGIA TIMES. 0
W. J MaRThU Edltor » »*"«Froprtetor..
• VERSIFICATION.
As bright as the golden Jane weather
Came Rose with her prayer-book and fan
Through the church door, and homeward to¬
gether
We walked, and my wooing began.
She chatted of anthem and sermon—
I thought of her lips and blue eyes—
Of her light dainty step in the German
Till vaguer became my replies.
As I vainly endeavored to fashion
Some phrase that should fitly express,
Or Hat of, that burden of passion
Which she, alas l seemed not to guess.
Bat we paused on the bridge, whose gray
arches
" Look down on the bridge in the brook,
And there in the shade of the larches
Her little gloved fingers I took.
And said; ,- Kose, you’ve been kissed in a
sonnet
In which I my emotions rehearse,”
When a voice ’neath the pretty pink bonnet
Mnrmured; “Barling, I am not a-verse.”
—Life.
The Letter.
“Any letters?” asked the Widow
Wadsworth, turning from the grocery
counter of the “store” of Komhill to the
corner by the window over which swung
a placard bearing the legend “Post of¬
fice” upon it, and glancing through her
spectacles at the small row of candy jars
which were made to do duly as letter
holders. “Any letters for our house
Mr. Bristol?”
Mr. Bristol, the senior of that name—
who was too rheumatic to weigh grocer¬
ies or measure calico, was as deaf as a
post, had, perhaps, the least natural
talent for the reading of dubious script
that could be found in the person of any
living man; and, besides this, could
never find his spectacles—roused himself
from a nap in whioh he had been in¬
dulging, looked bewildered, and seemed
ter a moment dubious as to what he
should do next; but seeing that Mrs.
Wadsworth’s eyes were fixed upon the'
candy jars, decided that she wanted a
' slowly.took delibera¬ two
' tSTheSTTowh and, wifh much
tion, spread them before her like a pack
of cards.
“I’ve put my spooks some’rs,” he said,
“but where I dunno. Look ’em over
and sort ont what’s youra, Mrs. Wads
f worth.”
This was old Mr. Bristol’s usual style
of performing the business of postmaster.
” And as it was an honest place, little
harm eame of it. Often people oarriea
their neighbors’ letters to them when
they happened to pass their gates, and
the only registered letter that ever yet
has been sent to Komhill was consid¬
ered an insult to the community at large.
“They might ha’ known no one would
ha’ meddled with it,” said the post¬
master.
And the farmers talked the matter
over as they jogged home side by side in
their wagons, and the snmmer boarder
who did the strange thing was made to
feel the indignation of her hostess. But
that was long after the evening on which
Mrs. Wadsworth asked if there were any
letters for “her house.”
Peering over the little row spread be¬
fore her, she saw that there was one—a
small envelope—addressed in a delioate
lady’s hand to “James Wadsworth.
Esq.”
“That’s Jim,” said the old lady
“Who can have writ to him ?”
There were no more. She pnt hex
single epistle in her pooket, pushed the
rest toward Mr. Bristol and nodded at
him. Mr. Bristol nodded in reply, re¬
jarred the letters, perched himself npon
a stool and went to sleep again. Then
the younger Bristol helped the old lady
into her wagon, handed in her basket of
groceries, and she drove away,
with the letter in her pooket, and a
queer feeling, half fear and half anger,
at her heart as she said over and over
again, talking alond to herself, as the
old white horse plodded along the lonely
road:
“Who has writ to Jim, I wonder?”
Maggie, tbe “help,” oame out to
carry to the basket, when Mrs. Wads¬
worth stopped at her own gate, and she
herself walked into the kitohen. There
was a great stove there, and on it the
kettle was boiling, steam rushing from
its spout in one Jong stream, and creep¬
ing in a flat sheet from under the cover.
Before this stove Mrs. Wadsworth stood
and warmed her hands.
“I wonder who has writ to Jim,” Bhe
said. “If I thought it was that girl I’d
throw it into the fire.”
Then a story she had beard of some
one who had feloniously opened an en¬
velope by holding it over the steam of
a tea-kettle occurred to her mind.
“I wonder whether it would.open that
way,” she said. “It couldn’t lie any
great harm just to satisfy myself that it
isn't from her. Jim is bnt a boy, and I
am his mother. I guess, according to
l»Sx I’d ht”8 a right. X ought to, any-
SPRING PLACE* GEORGIA. THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 1885.
how.”
Then the hand which held the letter
nntstretehed itself. The stream of steam
beat against the flap of the envelope.
In a moment or so, it hung loose and
limp and wet in her hands.”
"I’ll go and- pnt my bonnet away,”
she said, to an unnatural sort of tone,
and hurried upstairs.
“I am his mother,” she said again, as
she sat down in her roektog-ohair and
drew the letter from the envelope. ‘ ‘It’s
right I should know.”
Then she oast her eye over the writ¬
ing. There was not much of it. Just
this:
“Deab James: I know, after my oon
dnot, it is my plaoe to write first. I was
naughty. humble Please forgive me. Isn’t that
enough? And if yon do, come
and take me to the pionie to-morrow,
“Your own
“Nelly.”
“It is from that girl,”,y«id Mrs.
Wadsworth. “It’s from-; ner. And
things have gone so far, and h*e hasn’t
told his mother a word! Oh, how hard
it is to bear! That girl I don’t want
Jim to marry; bnt of all girls, that one 1”
and she rocked herself to and fro.
“There’s been a quarrel,” she said at
last, “and she’s written this to make up.
If he never got it, he’d [never speak. 1
know his pride. She come of a pool
lot. I hate her; she’s a bad wife lot
Jim. I think it’s my duty not to give it
to him. I’ll think it over.” Then she
opened the draVer'of her bnrean in
which she kept valuables and money
and thrust the letter in and locked itnp.
She had time to think the matter over
before Jim eame in a for he was late, and
“that girl” grew more distasteful to her
every moment.
“Going to the picnio, Jim?” she
asked, as they sat over their tea. And
Jim answered that he hadn’t thought of
‘Td go if I was yon, and take yonr
Cousin Miranda,” said the old lady.
"She expects it, I guess.” And Jim,
only moved by the remembrance of Nel¬
lie Harlow, and a wish to make her jeal¬
ous, agreed to the proposition. He took
Miranda to the pionio next day, and Nob¬
ile was there, and saw them together;
and remembering her note, written to a
moment of softness, when the wish to re¬
call certain angry words she had said to
Jim, was strong upon her, she grew sick
with shame. She had-held ont her hand
in reconciliation, and he had not taken
it. Coaid anything make a woman more
indignant? After that she never even
looked at him.
Old Mrs. Wadsworth having kept
Jim’s letter a few days, felt that too
much explanation would be necessary
were she to give it to him after so long
a delay. Besides it would be well for
her son that he should not see it. He
would, of course, marry his cousin Mi¬
randa-only a second cousin—a girl she
liked, and who would never set herself
np above her mother-in-law—a girl who
did not, like poor Nellie, look aggrava
tingly stylish.
But Jim did not marry Miranda. No
one will ever know now whether Miranda
would have accepted him or not. After
awhile she married a Mr. Wiseman, who
was better off than Jim, and old enough
to be his father; and Nelly, too, mar¬
ried. While her heart burnt with re¬
sentment against her old lover, she
chose a new one, a dark, moody, silent
sort of man, who oarried her away to
the city, whence there came rumors now
and then that she was not happy, that
her husband led a wild life. Onoe
some one declared that he was a very
madman to his jealousy, and locked her
in her room at times. But no one
knew whether it was true or not. Her
parents would never say anything about
her.
As for James Wadsworth, he had
gone to ohurch to see her married and
had gone home with a headache. The
next day he was deliriotls; a brain fever
had set in and the do6tors shook their
heads over him. What he said to his
delirium only his mother understood:
ont if she could have undone the deed
that she had done, she would have
thanked Heaven. For weeks he lay at
death’s door, and then a pale shadow
orept abont the honse—the wreck of
bright, handsome Jim Wadsworth. His
beauty was gone, and no one felt quite
sure about his mind. He answered
sensibly enough when he was spoken to,
bnt voluntarily he never spoke.
After awhile he grew strong enough to
do farm work, and did what his mother
suggested, and she grew need to his al¬
tered ways. And so matters rested
when, ten years from her wedding-day,
Nelly oame back to her father’s home in
a widow’s eap. And the people of
Kornhill learnt that her husband was
dead, and began to wonder whether he
bad left her money.
Jim, plowing in the adjoining field,
saw her as she sat npon the old home¬
stead Doreh, and stood, for a moment,
staring at net. Kies no Jsft his plow in
in the farrow, his horses standing
where they were, and went home. His
mother saw him coming. He tramped
over the beds of vegetables, and trod
down thb yonng com. He sought no
path. As the bee flies he sought the
doorway at which his mother stood
staring at him, and walked into the
kitchen past her without a look.
“Jim, my boy,” said the old woman,
“what is it?”
He made her no answer; but went to
his room and straight to bed. For
hoars be never spoke to her. Then he
began to babble. He uttered Nelly’s
name; he reproaohed her with incon¬
stancy; he called her tender names in
one breath and cursed her in the next.
Then he gave one wild ory and sprang
up in his bed and dropped baok again,
with his eyes staring toward heaven.
He was dead; the mother knew that be¬
fore they told her se.
The next day a coffin stood in the
tow-ceiled parlor, and in it lay a pale
statue with olosed eyes—-all that was
left of Jim Wadsworth. One by one
the friends and neighbors eame softly in
to look at him, and went away more
softly, often in tears. At last oame one
woman—a fair woman, in a widow’s
cap and veil who stood longer than the
rest looking at the still, white faoe, and
at her own request was left alone with
it, while curious people in the other
room wondered whether it was true that
Nelly and Jim were once engaged and
had quarreled. For this was Nelly, in
her widow’s weeds, who had come to
look at Jim for the last time.
As she stood there, with thoughts for
which there was no words trooping
through her mind, an inner door opened
and an old woman crept in. It was
Mrs. Wadsworth, broken down at last^
.
and with the strange, restless light of
an unsettled intellect in her light bine
eyes.
She held an old letter in her hand,
and it rustled as she slowly crossed the
room and stood beside the coffin,
"Jim," said she, "here’s your letter.
I’ve been thinking it over, and sinoe
you take it so hard, yon’d better have
it. I only kep’ it for your own good,
Jim. She ain’t the girl for you; but yon
take it so hard. Wake up, Jim; here’s
your letter.”
But the white, frozen hands lay still
upon the breast, and other small, living
woman’s hands grasped it instead.
Nelly knew all the story now.
“Here is your letter, Jim,” she whis¬
pered. “Oh, Jim, Jim,” and she laid
it softly under the white flowers npon
the bosom, and, stooping, kissed the
waxen hands and brow.. “Oh, Jim,
Jim!” she said again, and let her blaok
veil down over her faoe, and went her
way; and the gossips who stared after
her as she passed down the village
street, wondered again if she had ever
been engaged to Jim Wadsworth, but
none of them ever knew. The grave
keeps its seoret, so also does a woman’s
heart,
The Physical Year.
There eonttones to be a great deal of
uneasiness among the department peo¬
ple about changes, says a Washington
letter writer. Perhaps there is no class
of employees in the departments who
are more disturbed than the colored
people. The colored employees of the
Government are the aristocrats of theii
society. Some of them have accumu¬
lated fine properties. I know of on
colored messenger who has four or fiv
sons in the departments. The family
all live together in one honse. Their
aggregate salaries must reaoh ove
$6,000 a year. The ancient cook o
Gen. Sheridan well illustrates this pan¬
icky feeling among the members of her
race, “Aunt Mary” has been Sheri¬
dan’s cook for a long period. When he
left Chicago he set her up to a small
shop there. Her daughter married one
of the messengers in the War Depart¬
ment. She reoentiy eame on to visit hei
married daughter. She has been in
Washington now about two weeks. The
other day she expressed opinion oq
the situation to a lady nd of Gen.
Sheridan’s. Aunt Mary said : “Gen,
Sheridan, he is all right and I was pow¬
erful glad of it. Dese yer Democrat*
can’t get him ont no how, bnt all d<
odder niggers will have to go by de end
of de physical year.”
A Level Head.—A California paper
tells this story: Said an Indian to a
whiteman: “Yon go to party at Inde
pendence ?” “No,” said the white man;
“I am broke and can’t go,” “What for
you talk so ?” said the Indian; “you
work all time, earn money; what for you
no keep him? Some time I broke too,
buy whisky, drink him up, money all
gone. Now no drink long time, work,
plenty money, no broke; you do all same, j
no broke to*” I
W7
A REAL LIFE NOVEL.
■
HE BAS NEITHER MURDERED NOR A
^ MURDERER.
A • Mratery at the Pennsylvania Lumber
Woods Unexpectedly Solved.
Cfept. 0. Cutler, of Clarion Mills, Pa.,
“purchased a ticket for Omaha, and as he
Sfbso said:
t ticket,” said he, “is for a man
? for twenty years has believed him
[ 'to be a murderer fleeing from jus
tie,'. and whose friends, on the other
hand, have for twenty years thought he
was ihe viotim of the man whom he him¬
self believed he had murdered. His
name is Alexander Baer, and it was only
a few weeks ago that he found out thai
he-was not a murderer.
TffBaer worked for me in 1863. He
was paying attention to a girl named
Hathaway, and I think they were en¬
gaged to be married. She was a ser*
vaatat the lumbermen’s boarding-house.
* fall of that good-looking
year a
|tg Scotchman by the name of Cray
aeron ,Y>elonged oame to my mills to work.
somewhere in Steuben
Sty, New York. He soon cut Aleok
Baer out with the Hathaway girl, and
the result was that the two became
bitter enemies. They worked in the
same logging camp.
“|>ne^day in the the winter of 1864 Cam¬
eron. came to settlement with a
bloody face. He said that he and Baer
had got into a quarrel over the Hatha¬
way girl and had come to blows. Baer
and had^nooked iihen he him senseless to he with unable a club, to
caqie was
find his rival. Baer had not appeared
in the settlement, and was not seen again
about any of the camps. As Baer had
nearly 8200 due him from our company,
and hod left $100 in his trunk at the
boarding house, his disappearance had
an i ms of mystery about it that puzzled
ilȣt.$ji us, The^suspicion the'fight was pretty general
between him and Oam
-Si#* e Scotchman had killed bis rival
secreted his body, leron was aware
of these suspicions, and offered to pay
for the fullest investigation of the affair
and all the expenses of a search for the
whereabouts at the missing lumberman.
He employed an officer to follow every
possible olne he eonld find that might
lead to the olearing up of the mystery,
but nothing could be learned.
“When the ice broke up in the spring,
some boys who were fishing for snokers
in the north branch of the river were at
traoted by a peculiar-looking object that
came along with some ioe, and they
drew it into the shore with a pike pole.
On dragging it ont they saw that it was
the half-clothed body of a man. They
hurried to the lumber camp and told the
men at work there what they had found.
The flesh was entirely missing from the
face and head of the dead man, and rec¬
ognition of the features was impossible.
There were remnants of a plaid ooat, or
jacket, on the body. Alexander Baer
was the only one in the region who had
worn such a coat. The plaid was made
by broad stripes of green and blaok.
An inquest was held, at whioh the re¬
mains were declared to be those of the
missing lumberman. The finding of
the dead body aroused anew the suspi¬
cions that he had been killed by Cam¬
eron. The verdict of the Coroner’s jury
was that the man had come to his death
in a manner unknown.
“Baer’s friends demanded the arrest
of Cameron. A warrant was issued, and
Cameron ran away. Every one then be¬
lieved he was guilty of Baer’s murder.
He was pursued and captured, but while
he waS being taken to the county seat he
escaped from the officer and was never
recaptured. It was believed that he en¬
listed in the army, and a soldier in the
Sixty-seventh Pennsylvania Begiment
sent home the news in 1865 that he had
seen the dead body of Cameron among
those who had died in Libby prison. At
ail events, nothing else was ever heard
of the alleged murderer, and the inci¬
dents connected with the tragedy were
gradually forgotten.
“A few days ago a stranger appeared
at the Clarion Mills and asked for me.
To my great surprise he told me he was
the missing Alexander Baer, and he suc¬
ceeded in establishing his identity be¬
yond a doubt. He told a singular story.
He said that Cameron’s version of their
fight was true. When he knocked Cam¬
eron senseless with the dab, he became
Mghtened and tried to revive him. JFail
“8 to this, he believed he had killed his
rivs1, and > wiUlont » thought of any
tMn 8 else > fled from the plaoe to escape
4110 of his crime. He met
on the of the oam P » man named
^ >0n 3 r » w ko was in the habit of making
oocafiional visits to the lumber regions
t°r the purpose of baying np waste and
r * BS of 011 fcto&i- The man was very
^ tisedhis run ^- Knowing conspicuous that if he was adver
plaid ooat would
VOL. V. Series. No. 8.
lead to his detection, Baer traded it ofl
to Perry for a cast-off ooat he was wear
ng. Perry had told Baer that ho was
going to cross the ice at the eddy above
on his way to Crotty’s Mills. He had
undoubtedly broken through or stepped
into an air-hole and was drowned, and
his body, with the remnants of Baer’s
plaid coat on, was the one the boys
found the next spring.
“Baer went to Pittsburgh, where he
enlisted in the army, nnder an assumed
name. After the war he went to California
and other Western States, never having
heard a word from the mills or settle¬
ment since he fled until the latter part of
last December. Then he met, in Den¬
ver, a man named Philip Craig, who was
working for me at the time of the sup¬
posed murder. They recognized one an¬
other, and Craig told Baer the story of
the affair, greatly to his astonishment
and relief. Baer worked his way gradu¬
ally East, to revisit the old scene and
set things right. The Hathaway girl,
over whom the two men quarreled, was
married in 1867, and died last year. Her
son, a strapping chopper, seventeen
years old, works for me at the mills now.
Baer worked a day in the old place, but
concluded he preferred to go baok
West, and he’s going on this ticket.”
Mr. Evarts and the Elocutionist
Evarts is a jolly old fellow, very
sportive at times when it will do to re¬
lax his dignity, and much given to
joking when safe from publio observa¬
tion. It was Evarts’s habit of main¬
taining a sedate visage that made his
treatment of an audacious and self-com¬
placent young woman effectively crush¬
ing.
“I have made bold to call on you,
Mr. Evarts,” she said, “because I felt
surh you could appreciate the services
which I could render to your children.”
As he has eleven of them, he felt
bound to listen to any proposition that
purported to be benefioial to them,
“I Would like an engagement to in
istweVand entertain < the younger mem¬
bers of your family,” the caller oon
tinned. “I an very olever, indeed, and
am accustomed to recite for hours every
day.”
“It may be said to have become
obronio,” the lawyer interposed.
“Oh, I suppose so,” and the elocu¬
tionist was radiant.
“Weil, now,” and here he became ap¬
parently introspective, as he does when
formulating his long sentences, “the
theories and practices of my household,
in so far as they seem to be pertinent to
the employment of an entertaining in¬
structor, or we may say—I assume with¬
out any misooneeption of your proposi¬
tion or offense to your self-esteem—a
governess for the ohildren, are based on
the utmost feasible degree of tolerance
and charity. It is in my memory that
we once had a lame nursemaid whose
limp, though it may have been as rhyth¬
mic as a cradle to the infant in her
arms, was certainly not pleasing to the
observer less intimately related to it.
And I recall a coaohman of ours who
ocoupied years of service in dying of a
deformity distressing to the view. Bpt
in both oases the misfortune overtook
these individuals while in our employ, as
they had come to us in normal and
healthy conditions, and we felt bouud to
endure them to the end; but I hardly
think that we should be called upon to
hire a governess already in an advanoed
state of elocution, who to doubtless in¬
curable, and with whom the most ideal
charity would not demand that wo
should jointly suffer .”—Chicago Inter
Ocean.
Colonna-Mackay.
THE WEDDING CELEBRATED WITH PON¬
TIFICAL HIGH MASS.
Miss Eva Maokay was married to
Paris to Don Ferdinand Julien Oolonna,
Pii.ice of Galatro. The ceremony was
private and was performed with pontif¬
ical high mass by Mgr. de Rende, the
Papal Nunoio, in the Nunoio’s Chapel to
Paris. The nuptial benediction was ad¬
ministered by Mrg. de Rende, who also
delivered the me iage address. The
civil ceremony of marriage, which is re¬
quired by the Frenoh law, was pter
formed the day before. The witnesses
to this were Prince Oolonna Doria,
Prince Oolonna, United States Minister
Morton and Duke Decazes.
After the celebration of the religions
rite Mrs, Maokay, the mother of the
bride, gave a grand bridal reception,
which in every respect must rank with
the most magnificent festival of Frenoh
history. The reception was especially
distinguished by the quality of the
guests, among whom were inolnded
about every person of distinction and
worth in Frenoh society. Conspicuous
among these were General the Comte
Menabrea, Italian Ambassador to
France; Count Oamondo and Mme,
Wyse ■ Bonaparte.
STRAY BITS OF HUMOR
FOUND IN THE HUMOROUS COLUMNS
OF OUR EXCHANGES.
A Present tor Jimmie—A Miscount—Ne«.
leeted Work—It Was Time to Got Away
A Handy Husband. Etc., Etc.
A PRESENT FOB JIMMIE,
“Oh, Jimm-mee-ee-ee t” /
“Wotcher want?"
• “Yer comes yer daddy t”
“Wat’s be doin’ ?”
“Lookin’ for yon 1”
“Wot’s he want?”
“He’s got somethin’ nice fur ye!”
“Wot is it ?”
“Bunno 1 Looks like somethin’ tc
ride on. Kind o’ long and slim and
slick-like, like as ef he’d peeled the bark
ofPn it. » •
Jimmie dives into the oreek with his
clothes on and strikes ont for yondei
point accoutered as he was. He was
playing “hookey,” and he “had rode”
on one of them things before. It would
be a raw and gusty day when Jimmie
got left.— Burdette.
A MJSCdUNT.
“Mamma,” cries little Edith, “dive
me anudder date, p’ease.”
“Well,” says mamma, “you go and
ask Bridget for one—only one, remem¬
ber—and you may get two for Mamie”
(an older sister).
Presently Edith comes baok.
“Mamma,” she says, “I think Bridget
made a mistake and dave me two dates
for myself and o’ly one for Mamie.”—
Boston Transcript.
TIME TO GET AWAY.
“Hello, baok from New Orleans so
quick?”
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t yon find any quarters
there?”
“No; and the quarters I took with me
went so fast that I wouldn’t have had
one left to pay the Pullman porter if I
hadn’t left when I did .”—Arkamaw
Traveller.
a Sandy
Soene in the boudoir of a Hartford
belle:
Thoughtful Mamma — “Well, dear,
whioh gentleman have yon selected foi
yonr husband ?”
Dutiful Daughter—“Oh, I think PI)
take Mr. Fatboy.” dear,
“But, Mr, Littleman is very
rich, while your ohoice is very poor.”
"Yeq, my ohoioe is very poor, it is
true; but he is so big and stout he will
be just splendid to sit on the Bible and
press winter leaves.”
* “Oh, I see. Yon will not be infln
enoed by a monetary consideration.”
“No; I marry for love alone.”— Hart¬
ford Sunday Journal.
FELT BORfiD WITH IT,’
A lady was singing at a concert, and
her voice was, to say the least, very thin
in places,
“Ah,” said her husband, who after the
manner of husbands who have musioal
wives, thought her vocal powers were
,grea\ “what a fine voioo she has I”
“Very fine,” replied a strange man at
his side.
“What timbre continued the hus¬
band.
“Considerable timber,” responded.the
stranger again, “but too many cracks in
it for weather-boarding, and not quite
enough for a paling fence.”
The husband remained silent during
the concluding portions of the entertain¬
ment .—Cincinnati Merchant Traveler.
THE EXPBESSAOE.
“I would bo obliged to you,” said a
olosefisted old fellow to a country editor,
“if you will express my thanks, through
your excellent paper, to the many
oitizens whose timely aid last night saved
my house from being destroyed by fire.”
“Certainly,” replied the editor, “I will
express your thanks, but it will be neces¬
sary for you to advance about a dollar
and a half to prepay the express acre.”
DIDN’T LIKE TO HAVE HER WAY.
“I tell you I shall do as I please 1’
shouted Mrs. Miff.
“Well, well, my dear. I didn’t saj
you couldn’t,” replied Mr. Miff.
“And you can’t stop me !!”
"I didn’t say I could, my dear.”
“You’d better not try 1! I"
"Indeed, indeed, my dear, I won’t’
“That’s just all such a brute caret
about his wife lit 1” and Mrs. Miff pre
pared to ory her eves out.
OTBCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
“Charley has an awful long arm,” saia
Bertha, in a musing mood at the break¬
fast table. “How do you know ?” asked
her father, in man like simplicity.
“Why,” replied Bertha, “my waist belt
to a—” And then she oaught a glimpse
of her mamma’s horrified face glaring
over the coffee urn, and she thought she
would die, sure enough. But she didn't
She only said Charley told her bo.