Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 109, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1920 — DECEMBER AND MAY [ARTICLE]

DECEMBER AND MAY

By CRAWFORD LUTTRELL

(©, 1(30, by McClur* N«w»p»per Syndicate.) Jerry Wells, Jr., was her latest and most Important admirer. His holdings in steel alone made him a veritable young Midas, and Eloise was sophisticated enough to believe that no cupld waxed fat and healthy with the years unless his tender flesh was swathed in silk and protected from cold by wrappings of ermine and sable. So far her father had only been able to allow her dyed muskrat and skunk I She was ambitious. She had hopes of hitching her mortal clay to a star of riches. “I hate even the thought of being old,” she said one day when she and Jerry had been horseback riding together and he had stopped In the oldfashioned frame house to chat for a while. Then at the quick look he gave her, fearing that she had made a rash statement, she appended: “You know what I mean. I —l dislike the idea of old age. Life is so jolly when one is young; —Now.thereof) Henrietta. She's beginning to be so material in all her ideas. Instead of sitting here talking to us and being gay and everything, she’s trotted off to make sandwiches and to fix something cool to drink.” . ■ ...•, - —

“That sounds jolly to me, all right,” laughed Jerry happijy. “Henrietta is twenty-six, you know, and I supi»ose that is time to settle down. When I’m that old." this with a little shrug of horror. “I dare say my own thoughts will soar no higher than wherewithal shall we be clothed and wherewithal shall we be fed. Surely I won’t be tearing along country roads and taking fences like I did today. That is certainly a fleet-footed horse of yours that I rode.” He looked at the glowing girl before him. There was the sheen of gold in her hair and the color and texture of a pink rose leaf in her cheeks. Her eyes, looking at him from under lashes that seemed long enough to tangle, were as dark as patches of a midnight sky. He had never seen such beauty, such health, such vitality. ‘Tm glad that you enjoyed the ride. It gives me a lot of pleasure to make you happy.”

Eloise thrilled at that. Already the star toward which she was straining her eager young eyes had begun to twinkle. It seemed to draw nearer IS. the look in the man’s face before her. “I’m going to give a dinner dance at the club Saturday night." he told her. “Sort of farewell affair before I sail for the orient on business for dad.” Eloise choked down a gasp of fright that seemed to swell her slim, white throat. “Oh. I'm sorry that you’re going away so soon,” she managed at last. “It will be six weeks before I sail,” he explained, watching her flushing face with a sort of satisfied smile lurking around his wide straight mouth. “I am planning to make the trip west rather leisurely, stopping off every day or two to break the monotony of the thing.” “I can’t think of any trip being monotonous in a wonderful private car like yours." chirped Eloise “Well. here's dear old Henrietta at last! I’m simply starved.” She* tossed her riding hat and whip on the porch floor beside her and languidly stretched a hand for the little white napkin that Henrietta’s own hands had made Jimi laundered, too. “When 1 get to be as old as von. Henrietta, maybe Til do lovely things like this for thankless young folks,” she laughed.

Jerry saw a slow blush burn the older girl’s olive cheeks. Het fine hand, pouring the icy drink from the beaded silver pitcher, shook a bit The laughter died in his own eyes. “She’s relegating us to the shelf, Henrietta,” he said calmly. It was the first time he had ever used her Christian name. He took the pitcher firmly from her hand. “You sit down! Tm going to serve you.

‘Tm really very good at this sort of thing. Tm certainly not ornamental. Eloise thinks we are octogenarians simply because —” “Why, the very idea, Jerry I" interposed the pretty girt, “I didn’t say a ■word about you. We’re about the same age. Henrietta don’t mind my telling her age. She says she looks every day of it and doesn’t care. Don’t you. old dear?’’ *Tve learned not to care,” said the older sister patiently. •Tm much Older than Henrietta.’ Jerry told the startled girl in the smart riding habit. ‘Til soon be thirty-five.” “Oh, I didn’t dream of it. You look so awfully young and are so young. But then,” complacently, “men never show their ages, do they?” “I was just telling Eloise.” said Jerry, taking several sandwiches and a glass of lemonade and going' to sit down beside the surprised Henrietta, who, from force of habit, occupied the hard bench instead of one of the comfortable chairs, “I am giving a dinner dance on Saturday night) just my beat friends here. I dislike big affairs—crushes —you know. Since Eloise has been so vehement about haring old age and as I, myself, have came to see that December and May are too far apart —oh, every way—for comfortable companionship, Pm going tn send Henry Martin for Act and taka xuu myself. Henrietta, if vou

will honor this staid, elderly gentleman." He laughed good-humoredly, apparently enjoying tbe horrified expression that somehow took the beauty from the young girl's face. “I’m leaving Monday for the coast on my way to tbe orient," he added, turning to look at Henrietta. — “How loVelyT’^crled - Henrietta, enthusiast lea lly. “What a wonderful time you will have.’’’ She did not add that she was sorry or that she would miss seeing him around. “You know." he said earnestly. “I’m going to rcrtiember all the good things to ent you’ve fixed for me. It’s the first real home cooking I’ve had since I was a kid. Sometimes I’ve been greedy, jfbu’ve noticed It, of course, but a chap does get so infernally tired of hotels and French chefs. And then, there’s something about a woman doing it for you—a pretty woman like you.” Henrietta turned smiling gray eyes upon him. “It's nicf of you to tell me such agreeable things. I like to really serve, doubly so, when the poor service is so charmingly, appreciated.” “As if nobody ever appreciated you before!” interrupted Eloise icily. “Oh, I didn’t intimate that,” Henrietta gently chided. “After ail,” mused Jerry quietly, “the brute in every man loves real service in a woman, in his own woman,” he added, his suddenly disconcerting. eyes looking straight at jlenrietta. “You know I think it would be great to have a real home like this—" he indicated the rambling old house with the paint almost blistered off its old shabby walls, “open fireplaces, flowers ns only a woman who loves them cafi hope to arrange* them —like you do, Henrietta. You are the most capable woman' I ever knew. Say, I wonder if it would be too much to ask you to go down to my car now, it’s on the tracks, ready to pull out any time, and show my chef how to make chicken salad like we had here last Sunday night— ’’ “Why, of course I will. The idea of you remembering it!’’ '‘Remembering?” he echoed. “How could a man forget?" A few minutes later as they went down the worn old steps, Eloise turned up her nose disdainfully. To her mother coming out to ascertain the facts of the amazing news that Henrietta had gone out with Jerry, she said: “He talked to Henrietta about her cooking as if that had been bringing him here all the time. Men are pigs, all of them. She's talking Hindu literature to him now—l heard her start. Wouldn’t it be a perfect scream if she managed to go to the orient —with him?” Which is the very thing that Henrietta did, after all, only Jprry did the managing, and he did It with Incredible swiftness and with the ardor of a young man very much in love.