Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1907 — IN THE FIRELIGHT. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN THE FIRELIGHT.

By Margaret Lester.

- Copyright, 1907, by Homer Sprague.

For a minute It seemed to him as it his beautiful plans were tumbling About his ears, just as the card houses of his childhood had fallen fiat at the moment when victory perched on their gable ends. But as the boy had patiently rebuilt the card houses, so now Tom Graham resolutely set to rear anew his air castles of matrimonial happiness. “Of course, Nellie, I’d rather you wouldn’t work at all. No real man likes his wife to earn her living. But if you’re set on staying at the factory a few months longer, why, let’s get married anyhow, and yon and I can

do the work together night and morning somehow and take our dinners at the hotel on Sundays.” “Not ranch,” Replied pretty Nellie Dlnsmore, patting the carpet nervously with her beaded slipper. “I’d be a fright In no time trying to work day and night As soon as you get twenty a week, twice what I’m getting now, I’m ready to give up my Job. After having ten a week to spend Just on myself there’s no nse talking about the two of us living on $17.60 per, with taxes and insurance to pay and the cottage needing painting. If you really loved me, you’d sell the place. Tim Sullivan’s dying to buy it Then we’d furnish up a couple of rooms here In the hotel and live in style. Mrs. Conroy’d give us a special rate”— “Of sl4 a week, leaving $3.50 for clothes and incidentals.”

“Well, there’s the money you get for the place.” Graham’s face turned stern, and Nellie added hastily: “Or I’d stay at the factory until you got your raise, and then maybe we could find another place. Anyhow, we’d be putting money In bank.” Tom Graham bent over and took both the girl’s bands In his. “Nellie, dear, I’ve some old fashioned ideas about marriage and—you. I don’t want you to live In a hotel after we’re married, with nothing to do but listen to the gossip of Mrs. Conroy and her sort. I want a borne”— Nellie flung aside -his hands angrily. “Oh, well, of course, if you want a home and not a wife you might hire one of the McCarthy sisters—they’re past forty and won’t make gossip—to keep house for you. But as for me, I don’t marry until I see something besides dishwashing in a shabby cottage before me.” V , - ~—

Graham was very white now. In the days gone by they had played in that “shabby cottage,” oh, how happily 1 It had been Nellie’s one refuge from an unhappy, tearful mother, who had first driven her husband to drink and then followed him to a premature grave. Something like an Illuminating message flashed Through his being. If be forced Nellie into a marriage that appeared distasteful to her, she might become as dissatisfied aud tearful as her mother. He rose abruptly. He could not picture Nellie in tears, but there were little lines around her mouth at this moment that he did not like. He loved her, but he did not propose to wreck two lives in a futile attempt to try out the love in a cottage plan. Neither would he give up his tiny ancestral home, sole legacy of loving parents. Nellie had been happy there only a few months before, when she had boarded with his widowed mother, but when the latter had died Nellie had taken up her quarters, with a number of other girls from the shoe factory, at a second class hotel. Somehow Tom felt she had changed from ttie day she stepped over the hotel’s threshold, and he glared back at Its brightly lighted barroom and dimly lighted parlor as he stood out in the middle of the street. Tom was telegraph operator at the depot, and his cottage was not far from the tracks. The main street of the town led past both, so Tom seldom missed seeing Nellie' each night and morning as she. went to Aid from work. Once* as she passed the cottage he was washing his few dishes, and he saw her toss her head and quicken her steps. More often, however, he was at his post In the depot. He hoped against [ hope that she would drop him a forgiy • v' • J> ' .

lng line or fling him a nod of friendship as she passed the depot Instead each week be heard more of Nellie’s social popularity. The boys at the new suspender factory organized a club and gave a dance. Nellie was the belle of ■the evening. Miss McCarthy, who had come over to the cottage to do some scrubbing, told him all about it concluding with a graphic description of the wonderful new frock which Nellie had ordered from the city. That afternoon the weather changed suddenly. The snow came down first In a soft Bwlrllng cloud, then with crisp, needlelike insistence. Tom threw more coal Into the depot stove and made a quick run home to take the geraniums ont of the window. When he came back to the station he knew that a blizzard was closing down on Ridgefield. He wondered how Nellie would get heme, and then Syracuse called, and he had to put his thoughts on -his work.

It took all his strength to reach the cottage across the track. His first Instinct was to close all shutters and draw the curtains, but he remembered his mother’s custom of setting a lamp In the window for those who might be abroad on stormy nights. Such a cozy little kiteben as It lighted, with a fire snapping in the old fashioned cook stove which Miss McCarthy polished to brilliancy at each visit! He hummed contentedly as he sat over the teakettle and brought the bread and butter from the pantry. Then be stopped short and listened intently. What was that scratching noise at the door—yes—and now the sound of a muffled fall?

He flung open the door, and the wind blew ont his lamp, but against the blur of the snow he saw a dark figure huddled on his doorstep. He carried the woman Indoors, laid her on the old fashioned settle and relighted his lamp. Then, with something like a groan, he sprang back to the inert form. It was Nellie! Fifteen minutes later a white and very quiet Nellie sat before the snapping fire with blankets wrapped around her still trembling figure and a cavalier In short sleeves serving her tea and toast “And now tell me how It happened,” Tom said, with authority. “I didn’t realize it was storming so dreadfully, and my machine broke down just before closing time. The foreman—the new man, you know, from Boston—said that if I wanted to make up the time I’d lost—l’m doing piecework now—he had some extra work to do, too, and he’d see I got home all right. I was sort of glad to stay, because it’s fierce to go home to a cold room in the hotel a night like this, and when you have a headache you just hate to sit evenings in the parlor with a lot of folks and the piano jangling. So I stayed, but—but”—her voice was low and tear heavy—“on the way down the stairs—he—he tried to kiss me, and then I ran through the snow, sort of blind, I guess, and the first thing I didn’t know where I was. I Just saw the light—l didn’t know it was yonr cottage.” Pride struggled with relief In her tired voice.

“Have some more tea,” said Tom abruptly, and then for some minutes be busied himself around the room, standing before her at last in his heaviest outdoor raiment. ) “Where are you going? Please don’t leave me alone.” “This storm is no Joke, Nellie,” he said quietly. “First I’ve got to get in fuel to last us all night and perhaps longer. Then, before we’re snowed in for fair, I’m going to bring over the Bev. Mr. Gary.” Nellie rose uncertainly to her feet. “Now, don’t get flurried. You’ve had your lesson, and Tve had mine, and Wo’re going to be married tonight. You can’t get to the hotel In this storm, thank God, and you can’t stay here except as my wife”— his voice turned suddenly tender—“and t want you to be my wife.” Nellie rubbed her face against his shabby, fuzzy overcoat. “All right, dear,” she said docilely, and then, even as his arms closed around her, she murmured: “Tom, dear, this shiny fire looks so good and homelike. Those registers up at the hotel sort of give you a chill.” And then Tom knew that the cottage looked shabby no longer.

HE SAW A DARK FIGURE HUDDLED OR HIS DOORSTEP.