Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 160, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1918 — DAN CUPID’S WORK [ARTICLE]

DAN CUPID’S WORK

By LOUISE OLIVER.

(Copyright, 1918, by the McClure Newspa- ’ per Syndicate.) They say love laughs at locksmiths J It does. And It has been proved thaO It also laughs at gas bomb and shrapnel, bayonet and trench knife; the :• depth of the sea and the tops of the . highest mountains, the icy terrors dO the frozen North and bitter agony of the desert. But there is one thing left. We shall | learn how love conquered that. Betty Barstow was a very pretty girl, but spoiled. Perhaps that was why she merely laugh'ed at Jerome Gilbert, a young superintendent tn her father’s mill, when he fell foolishly, desperately, pitifully In love with her. “Betty,” he plead, “no one ever loved as I do. You see it’s the only thing I live for. Other people have been in love, or thought they were, but it was nothing to this. Can’t you feel it? Don’t you see it, that I can’t live without you? You’ll find it out some day, why can’t you give me a little hope?” Betty laughed. “Eventually, why not now?” she quoted frdm an advertisement. Jerome colored. “You’re cruel, Betty. You don’t mean it, I know, but it hurts awfully. I can’t stand it any longer. I —l’m going to enlist and I hope I get killed.” But Betty had heard that before, and It worried her not. He did enlist In the aviation corps. That was the next thing Betty heard of him, and he was gone without saying good-by. Then she grew thoughtful. Perhaps she had been a little unkind. She really hadn’t Intended to go so far. She had only meant to tease him a little and make It up the next time he came. “He doesn’t deserve any credit for going,” she said to her father one morning. "He went because—because he was cross about something, I believe.” “I don’t think so,” returned her parent. “He confided to me a couple of months ago that as soonras we had certain Important work done in the mill he thought he would go.” “Oh 1” Betty’s eyes filled with tears of humiliation and she left the breakfast table hurriedly. For the first time In her life Betty had a rebuff, and with characteristic wilfulness, fell In love with the unattainable. And then she discovered that she had really been In love with Jerry all along. Then her mind being serious for the first time in her life, she began to think earnestly of the war and of what she could do to help. She went in for Red Cross work for a while, and work? ed tirelessly in the Woman’s Motor

corps. But there were others who could do her work and she wasn’t satisfied. She wanted something distinctive. Then one day she read how carrier pigeons were needed in France, and how difficult it was to get people to train them. And Instantly she decided that that was her work. , She went out to their house In the country, with only the caretaker and his wife for company, and started out with twelve birds. It was interesting work and kept her busy. She would take the birds a short distance away from the farm at first, in her motor car, and let them fly back. Then gradually she Increased the distance*, letting the birds fly alone. At last it got impossible for her to take them herself, as the distance grew greater, and she would ship them to friends in different cities to release. They came back unfailingly, always with their little brass tubes containing a friendly note. White Wing was the swiftest of them all. Betty was very proud of him. Ope day she sent a message to her* self, or rather'to Jerry. She had been so lonely all week, and the solitude of the country gave her plenty of time to think. “Oh, Jerry, Jerry, If you would only come back,”’ she cried nightly on her pillow. “I’d never let you go away a? lhe next time she went to the city, her father was shocked at her a PP®*[* ance. “You’re working too hard with those birds,” he said. “Pack up and we’ll both go to the seashore for * week. They can get along for a wee* without you.” So Betty went, but she took her birds to test them In a five hundred mile flighrhome, the longest they had ever made. And that was when she sent the message to herself, or rather to Jerry, for on the little slip of paper she tucked into the tube on White Wing’s leg was written: “Oh, Jerry dear, come home. Ido love you. Betty.” _ Now arctic ice, and burning sands, gas bombs and trench knives not having baffled love, such a thing as a few hundred feet in the air was not going to get the best of the wily little fellow. Jerry was out on a trip, flying low, when suddenly something hit him in the breast There was a flutter of white.and behold, a pigeon lay stunned by the impact in his lap. Here was romance! Jerry, keen fox adventure, spied the tube and extracted the note, and thus received by Dan Cupid’s special delivery Betty’s heartbroken roessage. Jerry’s leave of absence came just when Betty arrived home. There was no preliminary. He just gathered her In his arms and kissed her. ‘ “How did you know, dear,” she asked curiously. “A little bird told me.” he “-