Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1918 — Gregory Fuller, Model [ARTICLE]

Gregory Fuller, Model

By Osborn Jones

(Copyright, 1917, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) There were twelve high-backed rocking chairs oh the boarding house veranda, and in each of those chairs sat a woman, varying in age and figure all the way from the six-year lassie, who sat bolt upright, with her chubby bare legs crossed tailor fashion under her, as she laboriously plied the stitches of

a wash cloth with her rosy fingers, down, or rather up,to Mrs. Van der Hayden, who looked as we who have never seen a duchess at close range Imagine duchesses of three-score and more all dp look; —portly and haughty and serene. She was knitting an aviator’s helmet. All in all, there were twenty-four needles clicking, and, save when some one stopped to count es, there were half as many tongues gently wagging. No wonder, then, that the two unattached males whom unkind fate had condemned to abidp in the one boarding house in town preferred to smoke their pipes and read their papers on the wooden settle down by the gate of the old house. Except for the fact that they were doomed to share the same bench in this ostracism, there was little in common between Gregory Fuller and the other young man, who sought to entertain and impress Gregory with his social conquests in his home town. Still, when the young man went for a week-end to that home town, presumably to score a few more triumphs, Gregory felt doubly oppressed in his ostracism; and without knowing just ,how things stood between Gregory and Margery Drake —the little twenty-year-old school teacher that sat up there in the third chair from Mrs. Van der Hayden and knitted sleeveless sweatersyou might have wondered w r hy he did not seek some other place to spend his Saturday afternoon than down there oh the hard wooden bench by the fence, with only a magazinq and a pipe to console him. Down there at least he was unobserved, or thought he wasf and he could be sure that Margery was safe. He had little reason to feel . Jealousy, for, except for his erstwhile companion who had gone home'for the •week-end, Gregory was about the only eligible male in the community. “Do you know, I think there must be something wrong with these directions.” It was the shrill treble of Mrs. Jones —the angular blonde lady with the bediamonded fingers who sat next to Margery. “I have followed them faithfully—bound off thirty-two stlteh- . es for the head, knitted five ribs, and then set op thirty-two stitches again, and •will you look at the size of the neck?” Margery beside her compared her own nearly completed sweater with her neighbor’s. “Mine is just the same size. I took it for granted that the rules were right.” “But I can’t get it over my head at all,” exclaimed Mrs. Smith as she seized Margery’s sweater and tried to pull It oxer her blonde pompadour. “Of course you can’t,” reproved the duchess, pausing as, she counted stitches —“twenty-three, twenty-four, twen-ty-five—with your hair done over a rat of course your head is larger than a

man’s,”. “You don’t suppose I do such a thing,” gasped Mrs. Smith. “Though I will admit that my hair is very thick end that may take up more room. But even if my hair is full, don’t you think a map’s ears are big and would take the extra room in slipping it on? I always think men’s ears are very big.” “I have noticed that Mr. Smith’s are," suggested the duchess, still counting. “If we could only try the sweater on a real man,” sighed Mrs. Smith. “It’s too bad my husband is a traveling man. He’s the only husband in the house and he Is away.” “But there are other men,” suggested Mrs. Van der Hayden. “Not Mr. Fuller," gasped Margery. “Please don’t |et’s ask him.” She had stfcn at least eight pairs of eyes cast in the direction of the little wooden bench and its solitary occupant It was too late and useless to protest for the portly Mrs. Van der Hayden had risen and beckoning with her large angular hand, she called: “Young man, Mr. Fuller, will you step this,, wayand then, feeling that her word was law, she sank down into her chair again; “Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty,” she counted on. Gregory rose and came up the steps to the porch and, as the twenty-four needles Ceased to click and half as many pairs of feminine eyes were leveled upbri him,, he felt the color rise In his cheeks and under his collar. “You are an average-sized young man, aren’t ybfl?” quested the duchess as if she were asking a new gardener whether he could cut the gfass. “Well, then will you let/these ladles try their sweaters on you?” „ V Then the fitting process began and the only consolation that came to Gregory was the knowledge that Margery was blushing confusedly and because he knew that the first sweater that was tried on him was made by Margery's fair hands. / “Yes, I think Ms eatt stiek out a bit, too,” commented Mrs. Van der Hayden, “but then I suppose the average

soldier might have the sam? defect. 1 remedied the trouble' in my boys—made them sleep in ear bonnets when they were little." Here she tugged regardless of Gregory’s features and got the sweater over. Then taking it off again—“and now my good man will you wait a minute till I txf this helmet on you. First, I must count the stitches to make sure I haven’t lost one.” “Would you awfully mind taking off your shoe,” a quiet little lady in black piped up. ‘Tm not at all sure about the length of this sock.” Gregory was still obliging, and tried on seve'ral pairs of socks and then a pair of wristlets, and finally Mrs. Van der Hayden’s'helmet while his dark locks, usually lying as close to his head as a duck’s feathers to its back were disheveled and towseled, and he was limping with one shoe off, for the -duchess had given him rio time to put his shoe back again. “It’s funny we never thought of getting yop to do this beforri,” Mrs. Smith said cheerfully. “You have seemed so lonely down there. Oh, would you awfully mind holding my next skein of yarn? I can use the back of a chair, but I’m sure you would be lots more intelligent about keeping out the knots.” —_ “Thank you,” murmured Gregory, and as he looked up at Margery’s face he caught just the suspicion of a twinkle in her soft brown eyes.

Perhaps it took as much courage for Gregory to do what he next did as anything he had ever done before in his life —for it does take more courage than some men possess to say the first words to the girls they love when some quarrel, groundless or otherwise, has broken the cord of their friendship. At any rate, when he had finished holding Mrs. Smith’s yarn, he deliberately took a skein of the same sort of gray yarn from Margery’s work bag, arid there, before all the boarders, said to Margery, “Now, let me hold this for you. I am better than a chair; Mrs. Smith will vouch for that.” , The rest was easy enough. Margery wound the yarn very prettily, and thanked Gregory with all her old winsomeness when it was done. There were more socks and sweaters to be tried on and more yarn to be wound for the other women in the twelve chairs. And so passed Gregory’s Saturday afternoon. - Somehow he managed that evening to ask Margery to stroll around the block with hiiri, and then they sat together on the little wooden bench by the gate. “Thank fortune tomorrow’s Sunday,” Gregory said. “You won’t have to knit then and perhaps I can get you to go up” the river—a little picnic would be good this time of the year.” “But we can knit for soldiers on Sunday,” insisted Margery. “Even Mrs. .Van der Hayden says so. Her minister told her it made a difference.” “She’s a cool proposition,” Gregory murmured. “Yes, there are always people like her in every boarding house,” replied Margery. “So much the worse for boarding houses,” was Gregory’s rejoinder. “Somehow I feel that if it hadn’t been for those women, especially that duchess, you and I would have made up long ago. But with their eyes on us, how could we? Margery, do you think my ears are so awfully big?” This with an emphasis on the “you” that Indicated that no one’s opinion but Margery’s counted. . “Boarding houses are dreadful,” Margery cooed after assuring Gregory that his ears were ideal. “Then don’t let’s live in ’em any more. Let’s get married and have a cottage of our own.” “Gregory, how lovely 1” About that tiihe the portly duchess clad in her black china silk bath robe tiptorid across the hall fb Mrs. Smith’s room. Mrs. Smith was removing the rat from her bountiful blonde hair. “It’s done,” excia’imed the duchess, “I knew it when he started to wind her yarn and they’re sitting out on the wooden beheh now. Well, I’m mighty glad. A boarding house is no place for young people like that anyway.” “It takes you to be a match maker,” sighed Mrs. Spilth, and then, as she brushed out the golden switch that she had just unpinned, “you were a wretch to tell them all I wore a rat. But I’ll forgive you this time.”