Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 176, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1914 — EXPENSIVE GENEVIEVE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

EXPENSIVE GENEVIEVE

By MARGARET COXON.

Miss Pearlie Fattershall frowned intently as she repinned her hairnet so that it would give the artful appearance of being'no hairnet at all. Then she stepped back from the small mirror with a sigh of satisfaction. “There!” she* said to the stenographer from acroea the hall. “A French maid couldn't* beat that coiffure, believe me! Gee! But I’ve got a heap more sense than I had two years ago, when I started working, Jennie!” “How did it happen?” asked her friend. . “I was thinking,” pursued Miss Fab tershall, “of Mias Genevieve Pye and the ornamental person taken from a stage sketch who is her maid. Spelled with capital letters, dearie, this way— M-A-I-D. Genevieve used to give me considerable heartache in those early days when she* would float into the office to see father. It was not superabundant affection that made her unable to exist from breakfast till dinner without gazing upon her parent Or, no! I knew, because Mr. Pye always came out to the cashier’s desk and then a bunch of Wills would be transferred tp daughter. “Father’s outside offices were a howling desert to her. She would sail in with her beautiful eyes leveled just over our heads—sail slowly so we could take in the details of her costume. I’ll bet the perfume she uses costs $1,600,000 an ounce. I went home one day lifter she had been here and threw my bottle of carnation pink, that Jimmy gave me for Christmas, clear across the room. And I made a face at myself in the glass when I saw my snub nose, and said, ‘Yah-h-h!’ as I looked* at my best foulard dress that I was dressing up In, and then I cried all over it. “I used to change off between gasping fn helpless admiration of her and hating her so hard that I wanted to be an anarchist and assist her along by the bomb method. It didn’t seem possible that any human girl had a right to be so easy to look at and be in a position to buy any old thing she Wanted on earth, from a pearl necklace to the best brand of candy. “Sometimes she wouldn’t bother to come up at all, but would stay downstairs in the limousine and send Hortense up to dun father. Hortense was

worse. You expected any minute tbat she would trip down to the edge of the rug, wave a feather duster over the adding machine and chirp, ’lt is ten years since I came to Wellington hall and in all those years the young master has not been heard from once! Ah —a bell! Who can it be?* “I never wept after Hortense’s visits. I just ground my teeth. Think of having a pert, snippy creature like that fussing around dressing you and noticing where your stockings were darned and that your combination suit needed mending! Not for me! I s’pose Genevieve couldn’t live without her, though. "Well, do you know what got me all over being miserable through envying Genevieve? I’ll bet I shed buckets Of tears over that girl, especially when she wore her ermines down one afternoon when I had Just bought a set of furs for $5.68, warranted real alley cat dyed, so a child of six could have called ’Kitty! Kitty!’ at sight. - ! noticed all of a sudden —I guess father was short of money that day—that Genevieve looked awfully unhappy and peevish and discontented. At the same time I caught a glimpse of myself in the office mirror—and there was I with my turned up nose and my turned up mouth, that’s always stretched, and it was a real, good natured looking, happy sort of face, if it never would take a prize in a beauty shop! z "Right then and there I said to myself, ‘Pearlie Fattershall, you’re an idiot! If you can make out to look as happy as you do with nothing, then thank the Lord you haven’t got so much that you have to look like a lemon because you’re bored to death trying to think of something else tp want!’ And I’ve been real peaceful ever since. Anyhow, they say Gene vieve is going to marry a count os something this winter. Pm spared ♦het fato!” "Is she, really?" asked the sfano grapher from across the halL "Thea there’s some hope for the poor gM because she won’t have her mono) tong after that!” Chisago DaQ> News.

"She Would Sall In.”