Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 290, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1914 — Her Diplomacy Lacked Insight [ARTICLE]

Her Diplomacy Lacked Insight

'lt was such a good chance,” said the girl with thirteen puffs attached to the back of her head. “I cant 9eo yet why things happened as they did." "Has Maine been getting ahead oft you again f Inquired the young voman with the collar that came ’way up behind her ears. “You dont mean to say you're going to let her get' ¥ Alfred away from you. apd you as good looking as you are? I’d think up some scheme that would down her! I’d show her!" "Maybe you would!" said the girl with thirteen puffs, bitterly. "Maybe you’re smart enough to do thlngß but I’m not. That’s Just what I’m mad about! I did try!" "I thought I was doing plenty!” said the girl with the thirteen puffs, vindictively. ‘‘And I had a right to, because I heard how she. told around that my complexion v#as adjustable! When the club announced that masquerade ball I knew my time had come! “There wasn’t any excitement that anybody could notice,” said the girl with the thirteen puffs. “ I Just had an inspiration. You see, nobody knew who anybody else was, but I guess I'd know Alfred anywhere! He has a funny way of stepping. “Besides, he’s so tall and he’s always mourning because he didn’t live in the old days so he could have been a king or something, so I knew at once that the man with a crown on his head and stars on hiß mantle was Alfred. It Just popped into my head all of a sudden. “When he asked me to dance —I was a shepherdess, and you ought to have seen my hair in curls! It looked swell! —I told him I knew who he was! Said I: ‘I know you, Tom Bagley, the minute you came across the floor!’” “But,” objected the girl with the high collar, “you said at first he was Alfred.” “That’s the point,” said the girl with the thirteen puffs. “I knew that he was Alfred and so I pretended I thought he was Tom. Tom simply hates Marne, you know, since she told him that whenever she saw bis hair in the sunlight she thought it was an automobile headlight. Well, I switched the conversation around to Marne just naturally, and then I began to do things. I adked the supposed Tom If he had seen Marne. ‘“I haven’t seen her,’ said I, ‘if she’s here to-night. It doesn’t seem to me she could have recovered so quickly from her fit of temper this afternoon. What! Don’t you know?’ says I, when Alfred kind of looks surprised. ’Why, Tom, surely you know M&me has the worst disposition on earth and throws things when she■ gets mad. She tore up her sister’s , costume to-day because she thought it was prettier than her own!’ "I was surprised when Alfred joined in himself, because he had seemed! taken by her tricks. He said he hadn’t known about those things, but hedidn’t like her on general principles:. This was better than I had hoped. “‘You mustn’t be mean to her,. Tom,’ I said, magnanimously. ‘There may be some good in Marne. I don’t; know what it is myself but maybe Wf. her own hair she wears, you can’t tefa. I’d hate to have anything I said /"prejudice you against a girl, Toffj, no matter how she’s used you.’ “He said I wasn’t to worfy, that nothing I could say could ip.ake him open his eyes any wider they already were open to the. delinquencies of Marne.

“Why, I was so gVddy-headed to think how I’d got around her and so tickled to think that, all her arts had been wasted on Alfred that I could have kissed him on the spot! I’m glad I didn’t though. And I wasted all the best/part of the evening on him!"

“Wasted?" inquired the girl with the high collar. “Uh-huh,” mournfully said the girl with the thirteen puffs. “You see, when everybody unmasked I found the king with the crown on his head really was Tom! That was why he agreed with me so surprisingly. And Mame had Alfred off la a comer the whole evening, and I didn't know It till the masks came off! • I was so mad I could have cried!" “Well, I don't wonder," said the girl with the high collar. * S