Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 168, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1910 — Sally s Birthday Gift. [ARTICLE]

Sally s Birthday Gift.

By Abbie Tibbctts.

"You have never given me a nice birthday present yet, grandma.” declared Sally fractiously. ‘You’ve always given me boxes of thread or packages of needles or something of that kind. But you always give Lucy a nice present." "My money is my own,” returned Grandma Brooks, rebukingly "4nd my dear granddaughter Lucy is always respectful toward me.” "I think I’m the one who takes care of you, grandma—l take care of your house, anyhow. I should think you might give me a set of furs, or something,” she addei disconsolately. , "I'm afraid, Sally, you have inherited all the imperfections of your mother. She was an unending trial to me from the day she was born till she ran away to be married." "I don’t wonder my mother ran away from, you," flashed Sally. "I should run away myself only—only checked by a sob.

‘‘Only Wesley Burbank Is a very prudent young man," Grandma commented with a chuckle. "He prefers to wait; he thinks I’ll probably leave you a lot of money sometime. But if I should you would spend it on furs and things, or lose it as your mother used to do before you. She actually lost SI,OOO in bills once which I was sending by her to the bank."

"And just because my mother happened to lose that, I suppose I can never have any furs,” wailed Sally, recurring to the original theme of the controversy.

"You might get something from the old cedar chest- in the garret; there is a muff and boa which your mother used to wear.”

“And which moths have probably devoured ages ago,” declared the unappeased Sally.

“You can find out by looking,” her grandmother returned indifferently. Sally did not feel very hopeful as she presently ascended the stairs to the murky little garret. And she felt still less hopeful when she lifted the lid of the cedar chest. And (here, near the bottom, wrapped in musty paper, were the muff and boa—not so ravaged by moths as might be presumed.

I can trim oft the eaten edges and make quite a passable article of this,’’ Sally mused as she twirled the big muff in an interested inspection. "But what in the world is in the lining?" she asked herself, cautiously fingering something which was neither fur nor wadding, and shrinks ing with a little nervous dread of an ambushed mouse.

But that she warily u.ew forth at length was not a mouse. What she gazed upon with Incredulous eyes was a roll of bills which, of cpurse, must be the SI,OOO which her mother had lost so long ago. How long Sally stood dazed in that dim old garret she nevar knew. It was her hour of temptation. By the right of her long unpqid and thankless drudgery, the money was hers. With it she and Wesley could begin life so delightfully—but all the same the money belonged to her grandmother.

“I should like to know what alls you?” Grandma Brooks queried with severity a little later as Sally was preparing the dinner. “You haven’t the mince pie warming yet, and you’re actually putting mustard over the cranberry jelly, I should suppose you’d be more heedful when I have invited Wesley here to dinner Just then the door bell rang, and the grandmother went»to the door. A Moment later Wesley Burbank followed her into the room. “I hope Sally won’t spoil our dinner,” she said, crossly, for Sally had dropped the luckless mustard bottle, and stood with an averted face, unmistakably crying. “She 4s sulking about some furs,” Grandma Brooks sniffed in her most aggravating fashion. Sally turned impulsively, with flaming cheeks. “I could have more than a set of tars,” she said, saucily, if I had a mind to be as unjust and wicked as you are, but 1 shall not keep 'from you what is v your own. There is the money my mother lost years ago. It was in the mothy old mufl you allowed me as a birthday present to-day.”’

For a moment there was an im pressive silence. And then Grand ma Brooks turned slowly tpwafd the pair. “I don’t intend to have our dinner marred by heroics nor any other nonsense," she avowed, with her severest frown. “But perhaps there will be no harm done, Wesley Burbank, if you will look at the dates of the blls Sally found in the muff. Then you will admit what was lost years ago has not been so easily found. I mean my granddaughters to share alike all I have. If I have been strict with Sally, you have no reason to complain, for I .have trained a clever housewife for you, and her honesty has been'tested and proved, as you will know. The SI,OOO Is mv birthday present to her. Old folks can outwit the young ones every time.”

And the young people admitted with remorse that Grandma Brooks spoke the truth.

The Dublin corporation has decided to have all the municipal carte lattarad in Eras rheradhirs