Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1912 — THE GIRL from HIS TOWN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE GIRL from HIS TOWN

By MARIE VAN VORST

llhXr.tfaa. by «. G. KETTNER

{Copyright, 1910, by The Bobbs-Merrill Co.) SYNOPSIS. Dan Blair, the 22-year-old son of the fifty-mlllion-dollar copper kin* of Blairtown, Mont., la a guest at the English home of Lady Galorey. Dan’s father had been courteous to Lord Galorey during his visit to the United States and the courtesy is now being returned to the young man? CHAPTER I.—Continued. On the day of the shoot at Osdene, Dan dropped sixty birds. He tried very haijd not to be totri. pleased. "Gosh," he thought to himself, “those birds fell as though they were trained all right, and the other sports were mad, I could see it” He then fell to whistling softly the air he had heard Lady Galorey play the night before from the new success at the Gaiety, and finished It as his toilet completed Itself. He took up a gardenia from his dressing table and fastened it in bls coat stopping on the stairs on the way down to look over Into the hall where the men In their black clothes and the women in their shining dresses waited before going Into the * dining-room. The lights fell on white arms and necks, on jewels and on fine proud heads. Dan Blair had been in San Francisco and In New York, on short journeys, however, which his father, the year before, had directed him to take, but he had never seen a “show” like this. He came slowly down the broad stairway of the Osdene Park House, the last guest In the corner, where, behind her, a piece of fourteenth century tapestry cut a green and pink square against the rich black oak paneling, the Duchess of Breakwater sat waiting. She wore a dress of golden tulle which was simply a sheath to her slender body, and'from her neck hung a long rope of diamonds caught at the end by a small black fan; there was a wreath of diamonds like shining water drops linked together in her hair. She'was the grandest lady at Osdene, and renowned in more than one sense of the word. As Dan saw her smile at him and rise, he thought: “She is none too sorry that I made that record, but I hope to heaven she won’t say anything to me about it” And the duchess did not speak of it Telling him that he was to take her In to dinner, she laid first her fan on his arm and then her hand. And Dan, one of those fortunate creatures who are.born men of the workl when they get into it gave her his arm with much grace, and as he leaned down toward her he thought to himself: “Well, it’s lucky for me I have my head on tight; a few more of those goo-goo eyes of hers and It would be as well for me to light out for the woods ” Dan liked best at Osdene Park his chin-chins with Gordon Galorey. The young man was unflatteringly frank In his choice of companions. When the duchess looked about for him to ride with her, walk with her, to find the secluded corners, to talk, to play with him, she was likely to discover Dan had gone off with Lord Galorey, and to come upon them later, sitting enveloped In smoke, a stand of drinks by their side. . To Galorey, who had no heir or child, the boy’s presence proved the happiest thing that had come to him for a long time. He talked a great deal to Dan about the old man. Galorey was poor, and the fact of a fortune of ten million pounds possessed by this one boy was continually before his mind like an obsession. It was like looking down Into a gold mine. Galorey tried often to broach the subject of money, but Dan kept off. At length Galorey asked boldly: “What are you going to do with it?” On this occasion they were walking over from the lower park back to the house, a couple of terriers at their heels. “Do with what?” Blair asked innocently. He was looking at the trees. He was comparing their grayish green trunks and their foliage with the .California redwoods. A little taken aback, Lord Galorey laughed. “Why, that colossal fortune of yours."

And Blair answered unhesitatingly: “Oh, spend it on some girl sooner or ■ inter.” ; Galorey fairly staggered. Then he took it humorously. . “My dear chap, I never saw a sweeter, bigger man than your father. If he had been my father, I dare say I might have pulled off a different yard of hemp, but I must confess that I think he has left you too much money." »tere are a lot of fellows idy to look after it for me,” ered coolly. Before his could redden, he cohtinsee, dad took care of me AV ' . 5*J - -'i ■>'.

for twenty-one years all right, and whenever I-am up a stump, why all 1 have to do is to remember the things ho did.” . For the first tlmeaince his arrival at Osdene Dan's tone was serious, interested as he was in the older man, Dan’s inclination was to evade the discussion of serious subjects. With Blair’s slang, his conversation was almost incomprehensible. “Dad didn’t gas much," the boy skid, “but I could draw ’a map of some of the things he did say. He used to say he made his money out of the ■earth." The two were walking side by side across the rich velvet of the immemorial English turf. The extreme softness of the autumn day, its shifting lights, its mellow envelope, the beauty of the park—the age, the stability, the harmony, served to touch the young fellow’s spirits. At any rate there was a ring In him, an equilibrium that surprised Galorey. •‘Most things,’ dad said to me, 'go back to the earth.’ ” He struck the English turf with his stick. “Dad said a fellow had better buy those things that stay above the ground.” Dan smiled frankly at his companion. “Curious thing to say, wasn’t it?” he reflected. “I remembered it, and I got to wondering after I saw him buried, ‘what are the things that stay above the ground?’ The old man never gave me another talk like that.” After a few seconds Galorey put in: “But, my dear chap, you did give me a shock up> there just now when you said you were going to spend ‘all your money on some girl.”’ The millionaire took a chestnuffrom his pocket. He held it high above his head and the little dog that had been yelping at his heels fixed his eyes on it Blair poised it, then threw it as

far as he could. It sped through the air and the terrier ran like mad across the park. "I like girls awfully, Gordon, and when I find the right one, why, then I’m going to feel what a bully thing it Is to be rich." Lord Galorey groaned aloud. “My dear chap!” he exclaimed. The spell of the day, the fragrant beauty of the time and place and hourwere clearly upon Dan Blair. Lord Galorey was sympathetic to him. The terrier came tearing back with the chestnut held between his thick jaws. Dan bent down to take the not from the dog and wrestled with him gently. “Swell little grip he’s got Nice old pup! Let it go now!” And he threw the nut far again, and as the terrier ran once more Blair thrust his hands down in his pockets and began softly to whistle the tune of Mandalay. He said slowly, going back to his subject: “It must be great to feel that a fellow can give her jewels like the Duchess of Breakwater’s, ropes of 'em” —he nodded toward the house — “and a fine old place like this now, and motors and yachts and all kinds of stuff." His eyes rested on the suave lines of the Elizabethan house, with its softened gables and its banked terraces. Possibly his vivid imagination pictured “some nice girl” there waiting, as they should come up, to meet him. “I have always thought it would-be bully to find a poor girl—pretty as a peach, of course —one who had never had much, and just cover her with things. Hey, there!” he cried to the terrier, who had come running back, “bring it to me.”

They had come up to the terrace by this, and Dan’s confidence, fresh as a gush of water from a rock, had ceased. His face was placid. He didn’t realize what he had-said. From out of one of the long windows, dressed In a ( sable coat,her small head tied up in a motor scarf, the Duchess of Breakwater appeared fibe greeted them severely, and Lord Galorey heard her say under her breath to Dan: _ />'

“You promised to be back to drive with me before dinner, Dan. Did you .forget?" " . s And as Galorey left the boy to make Tiis peace, the first smile of amusement broke over his face. He felt that the duchess had between her and her capture of Dan Blair’s heart the elusive picture of some “nice girl”—not much perhaps, but It might be Very hard to tear away the picture of the ideal that was ever before the 'blue eyes of this man who had a fortune to spend on her! CHAPTER 11. The Duchess Approves. His attentions to the Duchess of Breakwater had not been so conspicuous or so absorbing as to prevent the eagermothers—who, true to her word. Lady Galorey had invited down—from laying siege to Dan Blair... Lady Galorey asked him: "Don’t you want to marry any one of these beauties, Dan?” And Blair, with his beautiful smile and what Lily called bis inspired candor, answered: “Not on your life, Lady Galorey!" And she agreed: "I think myself you are too young." “No," Dan refuted, “you are wrong there. I shall marry as fast as I can." His hostess was surprised. “Why, I thought you wanted your fling first” . . _ And Dan, from his chair, in which, with a book, he had been sitting when Lady Galorey found him, answered cheerfully: “Oh, I don’t like being alone. I want to go about with some one. I should like a fling all right,, but I want to fling with somebody as I go.” The lady of the house was not a philosopher nor an analyst She had

certain affairs of her own and was engrossed in them and lived in them. As far as Lady Galorey was concerned the rest of the world might go and hang itself as long as it didn’t do it at her gate-post But Blair couldn’t leave any one indifferent to him very long, not unless one could be indifferent to a blaze of sunlight; one must either draw the blinds down or bask in its brightness. She laughed. "You’re perfectly delicious! You mean to say you want to be married at once and let your wife fling around with you?” “Just that" “How sweet of you, Dan! And you won’t marry one of these girls here?” "Don’t fill the bill, Lady Galorey.” “Oh, you have a sweetheart at home, then?" “All off!” he assured her blithely, and rose, tail and straight and slender. The Duchess of Breakwater had come in, indeed she never failed to when there was any question of finding Blair. Dan stood straightly before the two women of an old race, and the Americas: didn’t suggest any Hue of noble ancestors whatsoever. His features were rather conglomerate; his muscles Were possibly not the perfect elastic specimens that were those muscles whose strain and sinew.had been made from the same stock for generations. He was, nevertheless, very good to look on. Any woman would have thought so, and he bent his blond head as he looked at the Duchess of Breakwater with something like benevolence, something of his father’s kindness in his clear blue eyes. Neither of the noble ladies vaguely understood him. His hostess thought hint “a good sort,” not half bad, a splendid catch, and the other woman, only a few years his senior, was in love with him. The duchess had married at. eighteen, tired of her bargain at twenty, and found herself a widow at twenty-five. She held a telegram taker hand. “We’ve got the box for Mandalay tonight at the Gaiety, and let’s motor In." . ■ : r . cro CONTDrtnOAi .. i.’.l

The Duchess of Breakwater Appeared.