Indianapolis Times, Volume 38, Number 98, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 July 1926 — Page 18

PAGE 18

“Business Kisses” By BEATRICE BURTON Author of “Gloria, The Flapper Wife”

The names In *hts a tor* are purely fictitious and are not to be taken as inferring to any particular person, place or firm. t

REAP THIS FIRST FLOSSIE and MARY ROE ,MIDDLETON are two pretty sisters, the daughters of a widowed mother. They work for the Dexter Automobile Company. Mary Rose is secretary to JOHN MANNERS. the sales manager, and is In love with him. He is engaged to DORIS HINIG. an heiress. Because of her leel ing for him, Mary Rose repeatedly refuses to marry DR. TOM FITZROY. Flossie, a born vamp, does a very poor lob of keeping the office flies. Mary Rose discovers she is carrying on a flirtation with the president of the company. HILARY DEXTER, although she is going to marry his secretary. SAM JESSUP. She accepts ot jewelry troui Dexter, a married man, and goes joyriding with'him until all hours. The girls mother. MRS. MIDDLETON, can do nothing with her. , ... „ John Manners falls in love with Mary Rose, as he has never been ill love with Doris Hinig. and tell tier so. That night the two sisters have a quarrol. and to ?et even with Mary Rose. Flossie goes o Manners the next, day and tells him that Mary Rose is “just stringing him along, pretending to care for him. when she realty intends to marry Tom Fitzruy. Manners believes tho lie and Mary Rose is hurt and puzzled by his sudden coldness toward her. _ . . ~ . MRS. DEXTER finds out about her husband's love affair with Flossie. When she comes to the office to tell him she s gonlg to divorce him. she finds Mary Rose taking his dictation and mistakes her for tho guilty !• lobhic. She loudly accuses her of “vamping Dexter. Every one in the office hears her, and MISS MINNICK mid the other stenographers snub Mary Rose. „ Flossie, the real culprit, begs Mary Rose not to let a soul know that it was •he who ran around with Dexter, because she's afraid that Sam won t. marry her if he finds it out. So Mary Rose, who devoutly hopes that Flossie will marrv Sam and settle down, takes the blame. But she decides to leave the Dexter company, and Manners coldly accept* her resignation. One night Dexter roes too far in his love making with Flossie and lets her know how little respect a married man has for a girl who goes out 'with him. If lossie quits her job and disappears. She s gone all of one night anu tho next morning Mrs. Middleton calls up Mary Rose at the office to tell her somo news of Floss e. But she breaks down and hangs up the receWer QO QN W|TH THE per OR Y CHAPTER XLIX Mary Rose knew that there was no earthly use in calling her mother back to the telephone. There was only one thing to and get home as fast as she could, to hear whatever news of Flossie there was. For there must be news of her—and terrible news!—to make her mother break dowp and cry like that! Mary Rose jumped up and ran across the big room to the closed door of John Manners' office. Without bothering to knock she jerked It open and threw six words at him: “I’m going! Won't be back to-day.” A look of angry surprise shot across his face. She saw it, but did not care. She was glad to make him angry—to hurt him as ho had just hurt her with his cold indifference. “I’ve always been too nice to him! That's been my trouble!" she scolded herself. “He thought he could pick me up when he wanted to and bang me down when he felt like it, and that I ought to be thankful for it!" For the first time and only time in her life, anger, for John Manners flared up in Mary Rose Middleton’s gentle heart. Anger, and something very like hatred for him, as she thought of his careless answer when she told him she wai going to leave the Dexter Company. She almost forgot her present fear' for the missing Flossie, jn that wave of fury. But under it ran a calmer, stronger current of feeling—her love for him. Her love that would always be there, no matter what he did, not matter what she did, no matter what happened. He came suddenly to the door of his office and without so much as glancing at Mary Rose, spoke briefly to Miss Minnick: “Will you please take down my letters for me, this morning, Miss Min? Miss Middleton has the day off.” And at the very sound of that deep voice that she loved, Mary Rose’s heart melted and became as water. Not meaning to, she turned and looked at hint as he stood there, dark and handsome and scowling. She wanted to go to him and tell him that she did not want to leave the Dexter Company—that she wanted to stay td work for him forever and ever and ever. She wanted to smooth the frown away from the hlack, level brows with her <Hotels Madison w lenox r 7 <TIn the heart orthe doWn-town district, near alt public bui/dings department stores timt theatres, yet% away from the noise or the Cltlf TZi/tjsonabkpricot Mlfi/mv AVr. NSAA OHAKD C/JtCUf AUX

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hands. And more than anything else, she wanted to push Miss Minnick into the middle of next week. She hated Miss Minnick with all her heart and soul because she was goi'nfe’ to work for John Manners! But because she was trained—as all we women are trained—never to let a man know how much we love him, she walktd proudly and quietly out of that office, with her chin held high and her eyes blinking hard to keep back the tears that smarted in them. At the door she bumped into something very large and gray and Immovable. When she had wiped her eyes and could see what it was, it turned out to be Mr. Dexter— all In his light gray tweed suit with gray shirt and tie to match. “I was just coming for you,” he said, pretending not to see that she had been’ crying, "for Sam Jessup’s late this morning and much as you dislike me, there’s no one but you who knows how to make up these reports—“ He broke off, thrust a bundle of papers toward her and then took her by the arm and cjrew her out into the hall. Mary Rose could feel the eyes of John Manners and Miss Minnick on her as the door closed behind them. "Now, Min’s sure that Mr. Dexter's in love with me!" she thought. “She’s probably made up her mind that he pulled me out here to kiss me—” She looked up at him with her wet, blue eyes. “My mother just telephoned about Flossie," she said, with a gulp. “Something terrible must have happened to her—my mother can’t talk, she Just cries over the phone. I was on my way home—” “Then for lord’s sake, why are you standing here, girl?” Dexter asked. “Get your hat—l’ll take you home!" He started down the stairs as he spoke, moving with the youthful swiftness that hpurs of golf had given him. / “I’ll have my car around in front in three minutes," he called over his shoulder.

While Mary Rose was putting on her coat and hat before the washroom mirror. Miss Minnick came in. “Has anything happened, Mary Rose?” she asked with anxious air. But Mary Rose knew she wasn’t really anxious. She was Just looking for news. “Nothing at all, Miss Questionnaire! Nothing at all!" she answered, with a saucy snappiness that would have done rredlt to Flossie. “My word! But I’m getting mean and horrid!" she thought, as she went down the stairs. “I suppose that’s because John threw me down the way he did. They say a woman gets vinegary and sour and oldmaidish when love goes.out of her life!" If she had had time she would have gone back and told Miss Minnick that she was sorry. But there was no time. Hilary Dexter’s great blue ear—the car In which he and Flossie had taken so many drives —stood quivering at the curbstone. Mary Rose jumped in and it shot forward. "It’s quite some job, bringing up a girl these days—" Dexter remarked, when they had covered half the distance between the office and New York St. in less time than Mary Rose had ever covered It before. She thought he was speaking of Flossie and his next words surprised her. “I have a young daughter about the age of little Flossie," he said, "and her mother and I don't know what to do with her. Her latest crush is on a bachelor friend of mine—a man old enough to be her father—" He broke off abruptly and looked embarrassed. He had Just remembered that he was old enough to be the father of Flossie Middleton. Then presently he went on: “Girls certainly have changed since I was young, Miss Middleton. I didn’t notice them much for twenty years, while I was making money, and the next time I look at/ ’em, they swept me eff my feet! Smoking and drinking and telling snappy stories • —going out, tooth, nail and hammer, for anjt man they happened to like the looks of—” He scratched his head. "What d’you think Flossie’s been up to now?’’ he asked. Mary Rose shrugged her shoulders that dropped spiritlessly. "I’m afraid to think," slje answered in a voice so low that he heard only half what shq said and guessed the rest. "Now, don’t worry too much about Flossie,” he told her in a kind, fatherly voice. “That’s what I say to Mrs. Dexter about our daughter —I say, ‘Now don’t you worry about Elizabeth! These young things know more than we’ll ever know. They can get around without crutfhes!" That’s what I say."

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OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

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The car swung onto the smooth pavement of New York St. “I’ll let you out at your house and then go straight back to the office," Dexter said, as they streaked past the familiar houses. “You call me up and let me know how everything is. And if Flossie’s a'l right, get, her to come back on the job—won't you?” Mary Rose nodded absently. She was leaning forward, trying to see whether an ambulance, a hearse or a Black Maria stood behind the hedge. She felt sure that some such vehicle had brought Flossie home. But the space before the. house was empty. Bus Rises Chap 49 Gal THREE Dexter watched her go In and close the door behind her. Then he sat still in his car for a moment, looking up and down the street where he had dropped Flossie Middleton so many times during the last slxl months. There was a certain wistfulness in his look—the look of a man who has had a dream of Paradise Forbidden, and remembers fragments of his dream. • • • That renowed and dangerous gossip, Aunt Henny Blair, opened the front door to Mary Rose. “This is a line to-do about your beautiful sister, isn't it?” she asked, nodding her lmpossing gray head sagely. "I always said sne's. come to some bad end —I always said it, and I say it still! When you know the truth about what’s happened to

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her, it’s sure to be something disgraceful!” “Why, don’t you know what's happened?”, Mary Rose asked, looking from Aunt Henny to her mother, who sat, shaking with sobs, in her little hickory rocker. "I thought when Mother 'phoned that' she knew something about Floss—” “Well, and so she does know something about Jier, If you'll Just give her time to tell you!” Aunt Henny glared at Mary Rose. "Can’t you see that she's too weak to talk right now. She’s been crying like that for a good half hour.” Mary Rose went to her mother and put her arms around her. “Flossie Jphoned—” Mrs. Middleton began and could say no more. Her whole body was racked with tearing sobs. “I heard her call up. myself,” Aunt Henny confessed. She was on the same telephone line with ’the Middletons, and Mary Rose know that she listened religiously every time the Middletons had a ’phone call. “I thought it was our ring, instead of yours, and I took down the receiver. And I heard Flossie say that she was up in Michigan with —” “Oh—ooh—ooh—” wailed Mrs. Middleton. “My baby that I brought up so carefully—” She fell back in her little rocker, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her poor face all puffed and swollen and discolored with tears. "Dh, I may as well toll yotr what she said," broke in Aunt jagnny,

SILESMAN SAM—By SWAN

BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES—By MARTIN

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

who got no thrill from life like the thrill of telling bad news. “She’s up in Michigan with Sam Jessup! That’s where she is, if you want to know —up there alone with him In some God-forsaken little town nobody ever heard of before!” “But she's married him, then—” began Mary Rose. "She’s married him or she wouldn't have called up. he wouldn’t have dared to!” Aunt Henny said, “Hah!” and snorted. “That one? That Flossie? Why, she'd not be ashamed to let anybody know about anything she was doing!” she wentyon frankly. “And as far as ’phoning goes, she never would have ’phoned except that they haven’t any money to get back home on! She didn’t say she was married, either!” “We were cut off, though,” Mrs. Middleton sobbed. “She didn’t finish talking.” “Why, of course, she’s married!” Mary Rose cried. "And I think it’s horrid of you to pretend that you think she isn’t! You talk like a dime novel. Aunt Henny—” Aunt Henny gaped with astonishment. “Well!” she exploded after a moment. “I talk like a dime novel, do I? That’s a fine insult’to throw at me, when I’m trying to be a friend to your poor mother there ” She-dung a fat hand in the direction of Mrs. Middleton. “Trying to be a friend to your mother, in this hour of her trial and disgrace!”'she repeated grandly. “And you, you chit, tell me I talk like a dime novel!

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You'll change your tune when that dreadful child sneaks home ” And with her Paisley shawl trailing from her shoulders like the court train of a grand duchess, Mys. Blair betook herself off to tell the rest of New York St. more than she knew about Flossie Middleton. The telephone in the hall rang and Mary Rose flew to answer It. "Calling Mrs. D. A. Middleton. Is she there?” asked the long-distance operator. \ “Yes, put ’em on—come on, mother: it’s Flossie, again, for you!” Mary Rose cried. “Now, ask her if she married, the very first thing!” (To Be Continued) "What I’m ’phoning for so fran. tieally,” said Flossie, “Is” —but read tomorrow’s installment. RAINS IN KANSAS By United Press KANSAS CITY, Mo„ July SO.— Reports of an inch or more of rain throughout the corn belt of Kansas today brought other reports of brightened hopes for a bumper corn crop from that State. HOW AUTOS KILL Three-fourths of the victims of automobile accidents last year were pedestrians, of which nearly half wer# children under 15. Collisions of motor vehicles killed another 11 per cent, railroad crossings 4 per cent and street car and auto colli-

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