Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 200, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1918 — BEING CLEVER [ARTICLE]

BEING CLEVER

By HILDA MORRIS

WfRPW’W’ 1-1 ’ ■ ■ ■ ’ ' • • • www---(Copyright. 1918, by the McClur® Newspaper Syndicate.) * ..Emily was a very clever girl. Every one had always said so, from her adoring aunt, who taught her the alphabet, to her sociology professor in the university. She was pretty, too, or rather, as her butterfly cousin, Kate, once remarked, “she would be stunning if she’d give herself half a chance.” That was the trouble with Emily. In any save intellectual directions she never gave herself half a chance. She had never felt the slightest interest in boy# and men except as teachers and human beings with worth-while minds. At twenty-two Emily was that anomaly among womankind, a girl who had never had any sort of love affair. True, there had been dne or two young men in her classes who wotild have liked to go farther than mere acquaintance, but Emily had never given them the slightest encouragement. i When she went to visit Kate last summer it was not because she wished to share in the social life of which Kate formed so capricious a part, but simply because she thought that Kate’s home in a small town would be a good, quiet place where she could work on her thesis undisturbed. However, Emily was mistaken. There was not an evening when the veranda was not filled with gay youth come to pass the time, or there was not a dance at the club, a party or a play. The days were just as full; tennis, “joy rides” with one of Kate’s ridiculous boys, picnics, teas —in short Emily found that she would have to state her purpose in life quite flatly and ask Kate to count her out So she sat in her room one afternoon, trying to concentrate on a thick volume with a formidable title, while the sounds of gay voices drifted up to her from the veranda below. Kate was there, of course, and two or three other girls. Also two young ' men who should, thought Emily, have been in better business. There was something quite demoralizing about the sound of their apparent pleasure. Emily found it hard to work. Not that she envied them, rather she felt sorry forthem, poor frivolous things! She closed her book and sat with her eyes on space, thinking absently. "Where’s your cousin?” she heard one of the men ask suddenly. “Emily? Oh. she’s boning over her old books, at least she said- she was going to.” “Poor thing!” commented another girl. “I feel sorry for her. Just because she isn’t attractive and popular I suppose she has to be intellectual. It must be an awful strain!” “I should say so,” spoke up a third

girl. “I felt awfully sorry for her the other night at that picnic. Everybody else paired off and had a good time. She looked awfully lonesome.” “Wdl!,” there was a shrug in Kate’s voice. “I’ve done my best. I can’t help jt if she isn’t popular. Besides. I think she really likes to study. You can’t do anything for a girl like that.” Emily felt her face burn scarlet. So they were sorry for her! Sorry for her! Why, she had thought the pity all on her own side. How dared they? The voices below were rumbling on. “They say Grant Sturgis is coming home next week. I haven’t seen him for years, but they say he is perfectly stunning and an awful heart-smasher. There’s some one to set your cap for, Kate. He has loads and loads ofmoney.” It was right then, in anger and the spirit of revenge, that Emily conceived her remarkable plan. To think was to act with Emily, and she lost no time in writing orders in to various city stores. Within, a few days, mysterious boxes began to arrive for her, the contents of which she kept secret. If Kate wondered about them it was without a great deal of interest. Books no doubt, or some more of those impossible tailored skirts and flat-heeled shoes that Emily always wore. There was to be an Informal dance at the Country club one evening a week later. Rather to Kate’s surprise, Emily said that she thought she should like to go. “Could you get a man for me?” she asked her pretty cousin.

“Oh, yes, of course. There’s Emmett Brown; will he do? I’m going with Murray Jones myself, but when I get t h ere _lf I ca n tell you, Em, there’s just one man I want to flirt with tonight, and that’s Grant Sturgis. He’s the best looking and richest man in Elmville, and all the girls are wild about him. 1 want to cut them out.” “You doubtless will," Emily encouraged her, with an odd little smile. Kate was so Interested in her own dazzling toilet that she never stopped to wonder what Emily might wear. Indeed, she went off with her escort before Emily was ready, and -did not see her until after the second dance. And when she did see her she was not at all sure that it could be Emily. “Who’s that girl over there; the stunning one in yellow with her back towards us?" she asked Emmett Brown, with whom she was dancing. “Well, you ought to know; it’s your own cousin. She looks mighty nice tonight, too." Emily turned around just then and Kate gasped. Was this Emily, of the horn-rimmed spectacles, the tight coiffure, the flat-heeled shoes? Her dark.