Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 243, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1915 — THE CLOSED ROAD [ARTICLE]

THE CLOSED ROAD

By KEITH KENYON.

When Bert Perry closed his desk on Friday night he hadn’t any very distinct idea of where to go, but as hs passed to the elevator and looked at the door of the office that used to bo Jane Tenny’s he decided on a trip to Piney Roads. Jane Tenny had been a public stenographer, but when things had grown dull in Wall street she had given up her business ture and moved off to Piney Roads' to seek her fortune in chickens and fruit farming. It was a six o’clock Saturday evening and Bert decided that his first stop would be at the Piney Roads hotel. “It's a neatly kept little place," thought Bert, as he surveyed the symmetrical rows of hollyhocks on either side of the path, “although it doesn’t seem very large.” Then he sounded his horn for someone to come and take his car, but no one seemed to be stirring and there was no sign of a garage. He sounded, long and impatiently until at last from behind the house appeared an old man in overalls. “There ain’t any garage round here,’’ drawled the man. “You’ll have to take your machine down to the crossing.” “Where is the proprietor?” Bert was getting impatient and, as the old man seemed not to understand, he added, “the man who keeps the place, I mean.” “Oh, now I understand,” drawled the old man, chuckling. “It ain’t a man —it’s a lady. She was back in the orchard picking cherries, and she Bald she had Just stepped in to tidy up a bit and would be out soon. Here she is.” When Bert caught sight of a pink dress and then he recognized Jane — Jane, whose interesting, pale face had grown positively pretty since her sojourn in the country. And how unembarrassed and cordial she was! She really seemed to be glad to see him. * “From the garden I could see it was you,” she said, “and I Just had to take off my sunbonnet. I don’t want you to make fun of my farming.” There followed a few explanations. “No, I am not the proprietor of the hotel,” Jane assured him. “There must be some mistake in the road book. In fact, you are the third tourist today who has come here with that idea. And you really came all the way up here to see me? Why didn’t you let me know?” Just then another car pulled into that driveway, a car of French build that made Bert’s modest roadster look insignificant. J “I say,” called one of its two occupants to the farmer, who was just making his way back to Jhe orchard, “where is the garage of this establishment? We’ll drive right in and you have the proprietor ready to see us when we get back here. We’ve only twenty minutes for dinner.” “That’s the way it’s been all the afternoon,” said Jane, when she had explained to the distinguished-looking tourists that her modest little house made no pretentions at being a hostelry. “That’s a great disappointment," said one of the men. “It promised to be something out of the ordinary in the way of inns. When I saw it I felt certain you’d give us a dinner worth eating. What? Back one road? Thank you.” When Bert returned to the veranda from his room, Jane had solved the mystery. “I’ve been looking at your road book and it says that the way to get to the inn is to turn at the second road after you leave the pike. Well, the county has just closed up the first road and put a row of poplars across it. That accounts for the confusion.” v It was not until after Jane’s delightful little supper, served on the open veranda, that she showed her guest over the place, the orchards and the berry patches, the poultry yard and the neatly kept truck garden. “But the worst of it all is,” she confessed rather dolefully, “it doesn’t pay any better than Wall street.’.’ “Jane, I’ve Just had an inspiration," he said, very solemnly. “You say that you want to make some money. Why, this very afternoon you have had a chance to make more money than we’ve been making in Wall street for a week, or that you can get from your farm for many a day. The inn down the road is no good, I am told, and the owner doesn’t care whether -he has any patrons or not. There are dozens of motorists along here every day who would stop for dinner or luncheon if they knew you had good things to'eat. This road catches an unusually high-class traffic. Think about it, and in the meantime don’t write to the road book people to change the directions/’, ‘lt’s too much of an undertaking for a woman alone. If I had a man to go in with me—” She blushed in spite of herself ,as she realised the full significance of those words.. “Jane," he said. “I’ve been waiting for this chance for more than a year. I’m tired of being a broker. Let’s go into partnership. I'll buy out yonr place here and you go on raising hbllyhocks and wearing becoming pink gowns, and I’ll bloom forth as a country hotelkeeper. How does it strike you, little girl?” T think you would make an ideal boniface,” she laughed bewitch ingly. (Copyright, 1815. by the McOtrs News-