Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1916 — A MODERN THETIS [ARTICLE]

A MODERN THETIS

By IZOLA FORRESTER.

Judy was nineteen, Judy of Rest Awhile farm, brown haired, brown eyed, freckled, slender and graceful as a silver birch, with all the obstinacy and pertinacity of the Gregorys concentrated in her general make-up. Judy ran up the worn cow path to the fringe of birchwood and slipped into it, bound for the sculptor’s house. Ever since early summer it had been the house of wonder to her, the place where beauty was a real tangible thing, not a vague idea. First she had been sent with eggs and butter and fresh milk to him. His mother had led Judy down the lane to the studio he had made of an old woodshed. Here she had seen him first, working among his beautiful silent figures and after the first few visits he had asked her to let him use her hands f<jr his statue of “Diana Holding a Young Fawn,” “You have perfect hands, Judith,” he told her in his absent-minded, impersonal way. “You must let me make casts of them.” Judy nodded She had always admired her hands. “I like them,” she said to him. "I don’t think it’s wrong to like them myself, do you? The rest of me doesn’t match them, you see." Then Whitney had looked at her for the first time, realiy looked at her slowly, deliberately, with artistic approval. “I think you're all right,” he had said. ‘ I’d like to use your head for my Thetis. It has all of her elusive challenge.” Judy had never heard of Thetis, but in among the old high school books was an old work on mythology, and here Judy re&d of the elusive lady and her pursuing, changeable wooer, and it delighted her heart. Wooers should pursue, she believed, and should be given a hard chase, not just come along some day when they felt like it and tell one’s mother they were willing to marry you the way Hale Tuttle was doing that very afternoon. It had been such a wonderful summer and autumn posing for Thetis’ head and Diana's hands and some Egyptian girl who stood among lotus leaves and fed the sacred crocodiles ' from her perfect hands. She had forgotten all about Hale ami his general intentions which had been made manifest toward her fur years. Hale just seemed sort of comical when you measured him up beside the Greek gods and Whitney De wing. Judy turned breathlessly into the lane to the little house among the maples and. hesitated just for a second. A black roadster stood under tm trees, and Mrs. Dewing had the tea table out on the veranda. Judy’s quick eye saw Whitney strolling back through the lane from the studio with a tail girl in a long gray cloak. ’Conn' here, Judy, won’t you, and j -'in us .’” called Mrs. Dewing. “You have jhst seen the statues, Alice, but here is the real, live little Thetis. I don t kpow what Whitney would have done without her.” Judy smiled, with- the Gregory pluck even in defeat. And all at once, as she sat there drinking tea with them all. hearing them make plans for the v-'eddii g b -’ore Christmas—all at once Judy opened her brown eyes wider than usual and announced: . "i nr going to ba married, too. Oh, I've been engaged for years, off and on. No, indeed, the. same one,” blushing at Whitney’s rallying teasing, ‘'lie’s Judge Tuttle’s only son. and—and—bravely—Tve always liked him best of anybody.” “Hale Tuttle?” queried Whitney. “Really. Judith? That big, fine-looking chap with the curly hair who superintended the work on the state road over here? ’ . Judy nodded proudly, i And just then it occurred to her all I at once that she had not told Hale I yet, that Hale was lingering on hack home, waiting for an answer, while she had run away to find the trail of. romance, and 10, it only circled around and led back over the cow path through the silver birch wood to Rest Awhile farm, and Hale, waiting for her. ’Did you enjoy posing?” Alice asked. ”1 did for Thetis,” Judy answered happily. ”1 liked her changing into so many different forms, but she had to be herself at last. I guess we all do. I must hurry back. Hale’s waiting for me.” (Copyright, 1915, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)