Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 196, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1918 — HER VIGILANT AUNT [ARTICLE]

HER VIGILANT AUNT

By JACK LAWTON.

Miss Tuxberry had long been considering the idea of a companion, with whom to spend her later days. The great difficulty lay In finding one of suitable disposition, various maidens of apparently “suitable dispositions” having been tried, the most promising falling to remain “suitable” under Miss Tuxberry’s exacting needs. The death of a far-away and halfforgotten brother seemed the answer to the solution. Thomas, heglected by his fortune-favored sister, in leaving this world was obliged to leave his beloved daughter. Drusilla would be alone and penniless. Thomas, easygoing and visionary, had not prospered. His sister was his last hope of help tn time of need. To her, therefore, with an apologetic letter, he sent his'only daughter. • Drusle, he had called her tenaerly; In Aunt Tuxberry’s home began a new and sterner order of things. / Drusilla’s disposition changed nbt by her aunt’s fretfulness, but from each trial emerged again sunnily, like flowers after rain. One morning a bulky letter arrived. Its postmark was that of the city where Drusilla had made her home. The address was undoubtedly in a man’s chlrography. The blue eyes of her niece seemed suddenly illumined by an Inner light as she reached for the envelope and her dimples came Into play, as she perused the letter. “It Is from Jack,” she murmured happily; “he and I have known each other all our lives. He really felt dreadfully when I came away. We—might have married, but the war and all made things so Uncertain. Now —” Drusilla jumped up and whirled about In a joyous sort of dance. “He’s coming here,” she ended. All the hard lines came back to Miss Tuxberry’s face, but being wise In the ways of women, she said not a word Being unscrupulous, also, where her own wishes were concerned, Miss Tuxberry merely watched for, and failed to deliver Jack’s next letter. Drusie’s eager face grew perplexed. “I cannot understand," she said, “why Jack does not write the date of his coming." Miss Tuxberry had learned the date of Jack’s coming. / “Well, If I were you,” she advised briskly, “I’d have more pride than to moon about It,” and that evening she summoned her physician. “I want to go away to rest my nerves,” she told him. “What sanitarium can you recommend, where patients are merely healthy people humoring their imaginations? I don't care to be shut up like sick folks.” The doctor, knowing his patient, smiled as he scribbled an address. So Drusilla was dragged away. “Surely,” the girl answered her troubled conscience, “I could not be so ungrateful as to refuse this service. If only Jack would write —” Jack’s second peremptory letter, had been disposed of. Miss Tuxberry hoped secretly that hot-headed youth would find In this apparent indifference uport the part of his sweetheart cause sufficient for long and Injured silence. When she and Drusilla returned from the sanitarium she would consider further means to prolong that silence. For faithful and undivided attention to herself, the girl should Inherit her-entire estate. That would be reward for present deprivation. Some evil fortune aided Miss Tuxberry’s -plan. She had barely become established In her luxurious room In the sanitarium, with Drusilla near by, when a servant brought to the place evidence of a dreaded germ, and quarantine was declared. Aunt Tuxberry felt none of the apprehension of other guests. Drusle, pale and sad-eyed, gazed wonderingly down the road. “Why, oh why did Jack not answer her letters?” “Absence had brought forgetfulness,” her aunt insisted. “If Jack forgot," Drusilla felt desperately that she could not bear her longing heart ache. “A telephone message at the office from your housekeeper,” a nurse informed Miss Tuxberry.

“Asking some tiresome question,” that lady surmised. “You answer It, Drusilla.” But it was not the housekeeper’s voice which greeted Drusle’s ears. “This is Jack,” came decidedly over the wire, “and I’m not going to stand any .more of this hide-and-seek. I’m on my way to the sanitarium, be there in fifteen minutes; look for a runabout at the entrance.” "But —” walled Drusie. “No huts,” answered her impatient lover, and cut off connection. Evidently Jack was Ignorant concerning the quarantine law. She would not be permitted to see him. Across the office couch before Drusilla’s eyes was thrown the visiting doctor’s auto coat. Near the outer door, his face bent over a paper, was the quarantine guard. Swiftly she slipped into the cjpctor’s long coat, down over her ears came his soft felt hat. When she had adjusted the big gauntlets, Drusie reached with a smile for the doctor’s small bag. She would rush across the hall in that frantically busy way of his —and dare, escape. The great door opened and closed. A runabout waited near the entrance —Miss Tuxberry's vigilance was ended. (Copyright, 1218. Western Newspaper CnlQnJ - -