Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 208, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1912 — Under Difficulties [ARTICLE]

Under Difficulties

"This is something like it,” said Toung Borgus with satisfaction. "It sure is!” agreed Miss Clancy. She shrugged her shoulders as she glanced back at the lace curtains of the boarding house window. Inside the parlor the gas glared hotly, lighting up the hair wreath above the mantel and glittering on the gaudy vases beneath. "Now, that it’s got warm enough to sit outdoors,” pursued young Borgus, stretching his. long legs over three steps below him, “we can shake the parlor in there! Gee, but it was fierce last winter, never to get a word with you without a lot of old women butting in with, ’Excuse me, but I am looking for my crochet work! Lovely evening, isn’t it, Mr. Borgus?’ or glaring at us for being there at all! Or having callers of their own! Nice, chatty conversations we could carry on that way, couldn’t we? I —■" “Oh,” said a voice behind them as the screen door creaked, “is some one out here? Oh, it’s you, Miss Clancy—and Mr. Borgus, of course! Ahem — not that I meant anything, at all! I suppose I’ve interrupted your conversation, but it was so hot in there —I can go right in—” “Don’t think of it, Mrs. Miner,” said Miss Clancy, airily, rising. “You can have the steps and welcome. We are just going for a walk anyhow. Come on, Jimmy!” “Wouldn’t that frost you!” exclaimed young Borgus after they had proceeded a safe distance. “Just wanted to find out what we wers talking about! Catch her sitting out there by herself 1 We’ll circle the block and see!” When they got near enough again to see the steps young Borgus gave a low gurgle of triumph. The steps were empty. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get some ice cream. Just as sure as we go back there somebody else’ll come ’out!" In a sympathetic sort of disgust they sought the brilliantly lighted candy store on the corner and found a vacant table. “Strawb’ree for me,” slid Miss Clancy. ‘1 just wonder, Jimmy, that you haven’t got tired before this and quit me. It’s fierce, going to see a girl that hasn’t a parlor of her own to entertain company in! We’ve sure been chased around enough by them other hoarders!” “Well, were’s away from ’em right now,” said young Borgus. “Let’s make the most of it. I—” “Why, the idea!” broke in a highpitched voice at the next table. "If it Isn’t Miss * Clancy! Oh—how do you do, Mr. Borgus!” There was an arch inflection to the greeting that was intended to carry the idea that the speaker appreciated the sentimental situation. “How-do, Miss Binks?” -said Miss Clancy stonily. Miss Binks was forty, dressed like twenty and fondly thought she looked like sixteen. She made eyes at young BorguM who turned purple. Then she arose with her plate of ice cream and fluttered into the vacant chair at their table. “It’s so lonesome by myself,” she purred apologetically. "I was se thirsty I Just had to come out after something cold, hut I shrink from going out in the evening unescorted. It’s more sociable this way, don’t you think?" “Oh, my, yes!” agreed Miss Clancy with sarcasm that was totally lost. “Sorry we’re just through. We’ve got an engagement to meet some friends!” "Let me slip hack and stick some cold poison in her ice cream,” growled young BorgusXthroatily after they had escaped. “She’S' the limit! Another second and she’d have asked to go walking with us! Let’s go down to the little park. It’s only a few blocks away!” He tucked Miss Clancy’s hand in the crook of his arm and they walked on with regained cheerfulness. It was not so bad to be out in the dusk with the faint echoes of a street piano in the air and automobiles whirring by. Presently their feet crunched the gravel of the walk that ran around the little park and they strolled on till they found a bench that was unoccupied. A lilac bush In bloom waved above them.

“Gee!” breathed young Borgus with a vast exhaling of breath signifying peaffe of mind at last He laid one hand over. Miss Clancy’s* and she did not reprove him. Presently he, turned his head toward her, but the words on his lips died in thin air. A ponderous footed person engulfed in alcoholic aura swayed toward their bench and dropped massively on the other end and leered at them. “Bu’ful night?" he asked, ap peallngly. Young Borgus and Miss Clancy did not speak till they ware a block away. Then they halted and young Borgus spoke. "See here,” he said, In the desperate tones of a man at hay, “I going to say anything till I got a boost In my pay, but I’m likely to blew np and remove & few people from the landscape; if this goes on much longer! If yon can scrape along foi a yhile on what I'm getting Til speak for a flat tomorrow! Our own parlor —think of it! And our own porch! Will your Mias Clancy wept openly. "Will ir she repeated. "Why, it would just be heaven!"—Chicago Dally News.