Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1913 — ENEMY NEXT DOOR [ARTICLE]

ENEMY NEXT DOOR

What Happened When He Was Brought to Her Home Near Death’s Door.

By SUSANNE GLENN.

“Good morning,” called the man across the hedge in what Miss Mattie Mayne considered a disagreeably cheerful voice. “Good morning,” he repeated, louder and more cheerfully, as she continued pruning her currant-bushes in silence. She lifted her head then with a dignity that she meant to be chilling, and looked him over critically, before she resumed her pruning. - '“He is one of those men who never can see through anything,” she sighed in exasperation, knowing that Mary Lane was enjoying'her discomfiture from the back porch adjoining. The man, she decided, was big with an all-pervading cheerfulness, and might have been called' good-looking if he had not resembled so much the rest of the Daytons! “I wonder,” he was saying. to himself, “if she can possibly be deaf?” He came quite close to the dividing hedge. “Won’t y° u let me come over and do that for you?” he fairly shouted, and Miss Mattie distinctly heard a surpressed laugh from the Lane back porchWith cheeks entirely scarlet, she approached the hedge, pruning knife in hand. Seldom had she appeared to better advantage, and she was not a plain woman at any time. “I am not deaf,” she explained painstakingly, and in a voice too low for any ears but his. “Could you not see that I did not care to speak to you?" “But why?” he demanded, imitating her tone as well as his good bass voice would allow, ,hls admiration shining openly in his eyes. ‘Td like to come over and do that hard work for you. What is the reason I cannot?” "Because,” said Miss Mattie slowly, “we are enemies.” F “Enemies?” He threw his head suddenly and laughed so unrestrainedly that a head appeared at a nearby window. “Why, my dear young lady, how can we be enemies when we are strangers. If we are to be neighbors—” “But we are not to be neighbors,” she Interrupted coolly. “I have never neighbored with the Daytons. And I beg of you to remember it, and not make me ridiculous before everyone In the street.” And she returned to her pruning without another glance in his direction.

What Philip Dayton thought of this dismissal cannot be recorded, because he had recently come to the old Dayton homestead upon inheriting it at the death of his uncle, and he had made none of the Interested neighbors his confidant. He settled down with a capable housekeeper, and Miss Mayne continually heard him spoken of in the highest terms of approval, all of which she accepted in silence. But it takes two to make a bargain, as she presently began to perceive; she might refuse to be his neighbor, but he certainly had every Intention of being hers. One morning she found on her back porch a basket of such grapes as grew nowhere but in the Dayton garden. “The horrid wretch,” she cried, “not to give me an opportunity to refuse them. Now I shall have to accept, or let them spoil.” And she carried them in reluctantly. -—-- Another morning, following a moonlight night, she found the apples from her. Spy tree in a neat pile at the foot of her back steps. “I Was out there yesterday wondering how I should get them, and I suppose—l was seen! I declare, it is getting so I hardly dare walk about my own garden!” When snow came, which it did early, as if in exasperation, nothing could make him desist from keeping her paths clear. And Miss Mattie attacked her morning work furiously to drown the sound of his shovel, keenly conscious of the peerings and titterings along the street. The Dayton cat, a huge, black creature, seemed to share in the friendliness of his master and haunted her premises persistently, while the Dayton puppy chewed up her door mat and the evening paper. By spring Miss Mattie was actually showing signs of the strain. There was a little pucker of worry between her eyes, and she really dreaded the season of out-door living and garden making. It was a shame, for she was ardently fond of gardening. Happy that she.was free from observation. Miss Mayne dug contentedly in a warm, early bed close to the sheltering hedge. She even Indulged in a little song quite under her breath. Other contented little sounds presently mingled with her own and, turning, she saw, coming through a hole in the hedge, the sprlghtllest of yellow balls of fluff with sharp, inquisitive eyes, and busy feet “Oh, you darlings," cried Miss Mattie, and the chickens ran and picked familiarly at her fingers. “But ycu must go back the way you came, you naughty, runaway babies!** And she began tucking them back through the hole in the hedge. As she stooped to push the last one through, someone's fingers closed over hers and released them as suddenly. Miss Mattle fled precipitately. "How should 1 know he was on the other side coaxing them back?" she cried, washing her hands vehemently. “Oh,

a friendly enemy Is worse than a grouchy one! i pish he’d go away.” She was preparing snpper, still in a perturbed State of mind, when hurried steps sounded on her front poroh, and hastening forward she beheld two strangers carrying In the limp form of lier enemy next door. “We'll lay him here on the sofa. Ma’am,” they said, "and then get the doctor. He slipped on the crosswalk and the front wheel of the car went over him. He was conscious long enough to tell us where he lived.” And she stood alone, looking at the unconscious man stretched on her hall davenport. The old doctor looked grave. “They made a mistake in the house. If it doesn’t disturb you, I would rather not move him until we see which way it Is going.” “Certainly not,” said Miss Mattie quietly. “Would he be more comfortable in a bed? Have one of the men call his housekeeper.” And she went to lay out fresh linen.. “A Dayton! ” she murmured, in a dazed sort of way, and her cheeks went crimson.

His recovery was tedious at first; when he did begin to mend he begged to be taken home. “Certainly not, untill you are able,” remonstrated Mattie, “unless you are uncomfortable here?” she amended. ~ “I can’t bear to be making you so much trouble,” he said seriously. He seemed to have lost his cheerfulness. At last he was able to sit up and to receive callers, and one day she admitted a stranger who remained for some time. When the man was gone, Philip Dayton called hed to his room. “That man wants to buy my place, Miss Mattie,” he said. “And you are going to sell?” she asked faintly. “That depends. Ido not believe he wants to give what It is worth. Which is the better place of these two?” “Why, yours,” said Miss Mattle. “You like it better?” “Any one can see —” she and stopped. —' “Then suppose you sell him this place,” he suggested, “and we’ll keep the other. I’ll deed it to you.” “Oh,” murmured Miss Mattie, as he took both her hands in his and drew her down upon the edge of his sofa. “Don’t you know,” continued this very domineering man with a return of his old cheerfulness, “that I cannot go back there alone? Don’t you know that you do not want me to, Mattie, dear?” “But, she gasped, “what can I say to Mary Lane —and the others?” “Tell them,” he said, holding her with remarkable strength for a sick man, “that It was the only way you could get rid of the Daytons for neighbors!” (Copyright, 1912, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)