Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1902 — dumber Twelve [ARTICLE]

dumber Twelve

665? HAVE been and gone and lost I my heart, Father Confessor!” “Again!” The girl laid down her work in grim disapproval. “Only two weeks ago you told me you were clear of your last three flirtations, and had made strenuous resolutions, and now—if I had such a runaway heart, Eustace, I would put a chain and collar on it and lead it like a pet poodle; or—or," her glance falling on the wicker stand at her side, “I would give it to my mother to keep in her workbox.” “But my mother's workbasket has no lid," he objected, lounging lastly against the window seat. “Suppose," with mock beseeching in the laughing eyes, “suppose you kindly keep it for me in your work box.” “My workbox is always being upset; your heart might spill out and roll away under the piano, and lie there weeks and weeks; besides, I always take the liberty of using as a needle cushion anything ‘soft’ that 1 And In my workbox.” He flushed through all his brown and laughed a little nervously. “But then, you know, your heart is so hard you cannot have a fellow-feeling for my weakness,” he pleaded, meekly for him. The girl flashed a half contemptuous glance from under her level brows. “At least, my heart isn’t made of butter!” she retorted, while the little fingers worked on with vexed swiftness. “I ask you frankly, Eustace Winthrop, when you have got through all your flirtations, and meet the woman you can really love and honor, how much of your heart will be left to give her? About as much as a half-penny bit will cover! The rest will have been given Away piecemeal. And 1 tell you, if she Is a woman worth the name, she will not give you her large, true heart for your wornout, half-penny bit of a one!"

He sat up alertly enough now; the laughter had all died out of his eyes. "Do you really think what you say, Elizabeth? Because If it is true 1 am in no end of a fix.” “You deserve to be,” with that quick, characteristic little nod of hers. “The best advice I can give you Is to marry a woman who has only a half-penny heart to match your own half-penny bit, then you will not cheat her.” "But the girl I love Isn't of the halfpenny type of woman!” “The girl you love?” The scornjn the clear young voice made him wince. “You do not know the meaning of the word! Men like you, with three different love affairs in as many weeks, haven't it in them to love!" “But. Lizzie ” A little frown had crept between the delicate brows, and one slippered foot tapped the floor. “You provoke me, Eustace; you will not wake up to be the noble man you might be; but dawdle and play your life away. You play at everything jhst as you play at love." "Lizzie, if you give me up, now, and will not be my father confessor, as you have been these five years, what will become of me?” “You never follow your father confessor's counsel. When you thought you loved little Nettle, didn't 1 tell you what a sweet wife she would make? When you quarreled with Molly, and came grieving to me, I told you to apologize, for it was your fault, and you would not; and I don’t know when you will meet such a noble girl again. Now, she would have made a man of you! And Molly was the tenth—or was It the eleventh?” “Lizzie, I love one now who Is nobler than Molly, and sweeter! Will you not let me tell you about her? But then”— ruefully—"l do not believe it would be of any use!” “No,” decidedly, ss she folded her work, and snapped the workbox lid; “It would not be of any use. You must learn to be your own father confessor, Eustace. There is little Nan with her music roll; I must leave you to give her a lesson.” She smiled, half kindly, half sadly, as she held out her hand to the knight of the rueful countenance. “And you really will not let me tell you, Lizzie?” “No," gently, but with quiet flrmoeu, "I have advised you eleven times; this twelfth time you really must settle Cor yourself.” “In baffled silence he wstched her walk from him. What other girl carried her head with such proud face. ''Queen Elizabeth” she truly was, as the girls sometimes called her. “But 1 do just wonder who it is now,” Elizabeth mused, as she sat by her little pupil, counting the monotonous “one, two, three." What pretty girl was there with whom he had not already been madly in leve? And how long would this last fancy live? Three weeks or a month? The little pupil wondered at the impatient tone of the usually sweet voice, and the troubled knot between the delicate brows. 11. “Miss Somers, I wish you would see that the new arrivals In the next ward •re properly attended to.” At the surgeon's word, Elizabeth turned from the cot over which sb* had been bending, and walked quietly from the ward. Ten years had passed since the night ■ustace bad brought his plea to unenaprehendlng ears, and for seven at those ten years Elizabeth had been ■umbered among the sisterhood of nurses, when the war flag was unfurled

over our land, and the call for nurses came. Now, aa she entered the new ward and passed slowly among the feverstricken soldiers, her calm, brave face seemed of itself to bring healing. But suddenly lhe sweet face grew white and the flrm hands trembled. A sick man had raised himself from his pillows and called her name: “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” The eyes were wild with delirium, but they were Winthrop’s eyes, and It was Winthrop's voice. With steady hand she laid him back upon his pillow, while the unconscious eyes clung to her face with hungry eagerness. “He calls out like that every now and then,” the patient next him volunteered. “I wish his wife could come to him.” His wife? The nurse rose slowly, and looked before her with dyes that grew suddenly dim. Yes, why not? It was more than likely that he had married in these ten long years. And was it strange that his-jwlfe should bear the same name as the friend of fils boyhood? There were many Elizabeths. As she nursed him she schooled herself to feel that she was ministering to him in that other woman’s “stead; that other, who had the sweetest right to minister. And one day he opened conscious eyes and saw her standing by his cot. “Elizabeth, is it you?” he asked quietly. In his weakness it seemed not strange that she should be there. And she smiled and answered quietly, though her lips were quivering. But it was harder now than when the veil of unconsciousness hung between them, to feel his eyes clinging hungrily to her face, and the weak hands groping for her hands or gown. It grew so hard she could not bear it, and made her visits to the ward as few as possible. But his fever rose again, and she had to come and sdothe him. “Why do you not come as you used?” he complained with the unreasoning querulousness of weakness; and she satisfied him with evasive words. But a few days later she asked him, with her eyes turned from him, if he did not wish her to w’rlte to his people—to send some word to his wife. “My wife!” he said, and looked at her in amazement “I have no wife. The woman I loved, the only woman I ever loved, could not believe In my love. Do you not remember, dear, how you could not believe that I loved you?” “Loved me?” • Those around noted offly that the nurse seemed to be speaking in low, soothing tones to her restless patient while she smoothed his pillow. "Yes, you; who else, sweetheart?” A faint weary smile played about the man’s lips. “Have you not dreamt it in all this time? You see it was real love, Elizabeth; for it has burned purely in my heart all these years. I have tried to live purely and nobly for that love’s tJhke." “And I—l—was Number Twelve?” she whispered. The sick man next them saw the nurse draw the covering carefully over her patient's bands; he did not see bow, under Its folds, her fingers clung about those weak hands. “No, not the twelfth, dear, but the first For I never really loved any but you.” “Do you know I have been dreaming a dream?” she dald softly to him, as she made her evening rounds. "What was the dream, sweetheart?" “I dreamt that we sat again on the old porch, and you told me again of losing your heart to Number Twelve; and I—did not—refuse to listen!” " And that dream came true.—New Orleans Tlmes-Democrat