Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 191, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1916 — Preparedness!" [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Preparedness!"

By Hector Raynie Burleigh

(Copyright. 1916. by W. G. Chapman.) “Preparedness Is the keynote of the hour,” read Miss Letitia Parker in the weekly newspaper of the little village in which she lived.

She scarcely understood the full meaning and specific application of the word, for hers was a placid life avoiding war’s alarms. She never forgot that word thereafter, however, for directly below It was a four-line local item that made the color rise to her cheek and her breath come quick. It ran:

“Our former townsman, Abel Drake, is sojourning with some relatives down Gosport way. Five years is a long time. Drop around and get a good friendly handshake, Neighbor Drake!”

“He —has —come —back!” breathed Miss Parker tumultuously, and her hand grasped tlie paper with a nervous twitching of the fingers, and her eyes took to their depths a yearning, fluttering faraway expression. For it was indeed five years since Abel Drake had gone away, and all that time he had been enshrined in her heart of hearts as the model, the idol of her sentimental dreamings. He was twenty-two then, she two years younger. Now she was twentyfive, but time had not dissolved the velvet softness of her cheek nor the gentle luster of her eyes. She had grown a trifle prim with the dawning of womanhood, but her heart was still young. She had always liked Abel, despite his quiet retiring way. A stray expression of a friend of Abel, coming to her ears second-hand, had cast the die that fixed her life’s hope and aspiration. “I’m going away to wrestle

with fortune,” Abel was reported to have said. “If I make a go of It I am coming back to ask the woman I most admire and respect to be my ■Wife, and that is Letitia Parker.” And upon this frail soul food Letitia had existed during the long patient years. At the first she had hoped Mr. Drake would write her from his new place of sojourn in the West, but he had not done so. Then she had folded her hands and sighed, telling herself that it was “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Just now all the old romance was revived. The newspaper announcement stirred her magically, mightily. Of course, sooner or later he would come to Wayne to see his old friends. He might not have succeeded in his plans for getting on in the world. He might be only making a flying visit. He might have forgotten all about her. Still, hope burned brightly in her longing heart. “Anyway,” whispered Letitia to herself, “I shall—‘prepare.’ " She flushed a trifle as she said It, her self-con-sciousness causing a sensitiveness that made her shrink from anybody guessing the motives that lay under her secret f)lans. Then the neighbors began to talk. They all knew that Miss Parker had a comparatively small income and that her surplus was sparse and incidental. The old house was given a new coat of paint, the interior was neatly but cheaply redecorated. Some chairs and a hammock adorned the porch. A cozy lover-suggesting rustic seat was set under a shady tree in the garden. “She must have more coming in than we thought,” gossiped a neighbor, “to go to all that expense.” They little knew the hard paring and scraping the frugal Letitia exercised to carry out her project of “preparedness.” Miss Parker blushed again when she finished some soft downy pillows for the hammock. She was not planning for her own com- " Cort Sjje was “preparing” for “visitors,” and if through her mentality

there ran a vision of a stalwart, mun ly young fellow lolling in the hammock, her good, kind soul was at fault, not vanity nor the base maneuvering of a really designing woman. How her innocent, tender heart fluttered as the postman handed her a letter postmarked “Gosport.” That was the town where Abel Drake was visiting his folk. She opened it with trembling fingers, she perused it with longing eyes. “Oh, he is coming!” she breathed. “Will he remember the old days?” Abel had written a brief respectful note. He was coming to Wayne on business, he said, and would be glad to meet her again. Her reply was formal, but it put her in a flutter all day long. Then her days of days! She had donned her new gown with all the pretty ornaments she possessed. She might well feel a thrill of pride as she glanced at the mirror. A regally beautiful woman showed. Letitia was not vain, but she could not but realize the fact.

She feigned to be trimming the rose bushes lining the fence when she saw her expected visitor coming down the street. Her breath came quick. Ah! he had stopped to greet an old frieqfl. Then a neighbor, a woman standing at her gate, detained him so long that Letitia fairly stamped her foot in vexation. And then —he came, and his bronzed, handsome face filled her vision and she was happy. From the first she detected a certain constraint in his manner and marveled at it. He was distinctly formal and insisted that he could stop for only a moment. Her heart sank as he told her that he was going to return to the West. Then —sadly, she fancied, quite sadly—he bade her good-by and was gone. It was all so hasty, so different to what she had anticipated, she sat down on the rustic bench —alas! so lonesome-looking now. The tears came. Her proud woman’s heart sought to stem the overpowering torrent of dispair vainly. “I loved him so—oh, I loved him so,” she sobbed forth, “and he is gone forever !”

“Oh, Miss Parker, please mamma wants to borrow three eggs, if you’ve got them. We’re going to have company for supper, and she didn’t ex-, pect it, and she’ll send them back tomorrow, and please don’t cry. Are you sick, Miss Parker?” It was quite natural that the little prattler, when she returned home, should tell of the kind lady she had found in tears. Her neighbor, Mrs. Earle, at once divined the reason. Abel Drake got a new viewpoint of things in general. His hostess corrected some false Impressions he had received. “I fancied from what I heard in the town and the general air of prosperity about the place, that Miss ..Parker had got far out of my sphere of limited means,” and then from what she told, him he learned the truth. Letitia, seated'on the porch an hour later, started as a firm hasty footfall crunched on the gravel path. “I could not go away without seeing you once more,” spoke Abel, seriously, steadily, “after coming so far only to say to you what has been in my heart ever since I left here five years ago.” And then he told of his hard work to acquire a few thousand dollars — seeming to him pitifully small when compared with the apparent wealth of the woman he loved. And then the truth came out —she was poor, and glad of it, for he was rich—oh, Infinitely rich in love! and Abel Drake did not lehve for the West.

Below It Was a Four-Line Local Item.