Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 3, Number 3, DeMotte, Jasper County, 1 June 1933 — Oh Cynthia! [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

By NORMA KNIGHT

WNU Service

SYNOPSIS

Business taking him to Denver, Geoffrey Ensloe, young chemical engineer, takes up his residence with his mother's girlhood friends. They seem a happy, carefree family, Captain Cary; “Miss Nona’’ Aylesbury, the captain’s slaughter; Cary, thoughtless though likable youngster; little Tenny Montague, motherless, who lives with the Carys--and Cynthia. CHAPTER I--Continued --2--“Cary, you bad boy!” Miss Nona rested her head for a moment against her son’s broad shoulder. The sight of those two gave Geoff a little pang. It exemplified so exactly the sort of relationship he had longed for with his own mother: the understanding, the comradeship, the sympathy between them. Cary’s eyes were brown like Miss Nona’s. He had her fine profile, the crease in the cheek which was not a dimple but gave the effect of one. Geoff liked him at first glance. “When’s dinner?” Cary demanded. “I’m starved! Are we waiting for Cynthia tonight?” “No, it’s her day to stay until closing time. I thought perhaps you’d pick her up, Cary, when you take Geoff down to his hotel for his bags.” Cary nodded. “Poor old Cyn! I wish she’d ditch that infernal shop. She works too hard.” “So do I,” sighed his mother, “I hate to think of her down town all day in this heat. I’m always hoping that some time she’ll listen to our protests and give it up.” The Captain added a disapproving comment. “An expensive toy--that gift shop!” Geoff had found this scrap of conversation enlightening. Cynthia, it appeared, had not been driven into the realm of commerce by necessity but by her own desire. Another one of those females who craves self-expression, he thought disgustedly, though God alone knew what they expressed by means of Cape Cod lighters and snow-storm paperweights. His growing prejudice against Cynthia deepened.

CHAPTER II A Brute of a Girl. Dinner was a surprisingly elaborate meal. Knowing nothing of the benign services of caterers, Geoff found himself believing that the family usually dined on such dishes as squabs cooked with cream and mushrooms, white cherries in aspic, ice cream frozen in the form of rosebuds. He thought it one of the pleasantest meals he had ever eaten. The gentle courtesy which prevailed in this charming family, Cary’s blithe nonsense, .Miss Nona’s motherly solicitude, Captain Cary’s interesting reminiscences, even Tenny’s occasional childish pipe were a revelation to a young man who had known no family life whatever. He thanked his lucky stars that his year in Denver would be spent beneath this hospitable roof. Just as the last bit of the ice cream was disappearing and Cary was holding a match to Geoff’s cigarette, Tenny sprang up with a joyous cry. “There’s Cynthia! Oh, Cynthia, you did get home for dinner, didn’t you?” At once there was a soft bustle about the table. Miss Nona held out welcoming hands to her daughter. The men rose, Geoff looking appraisingly at the newcomer. Without realizing it he had been picturing Cynthia as a younger and less attractive edition of her mother. She would have the family brown eyes, but with a hard light in their depths; a pretty petulant mouth, probably a great deal of make-up. What he saw was so different that his bewilderment was apparent. The girl in the doorway was small. She had the bluest eyes Geoff had ever seen. Gentian blue, sapphire blue, a blue that had light and sparkle in it and was made bluer by the long dusky lashes in which it was set. Her hair was brushed severely off her forehead and caught in a knot at the back of her neck. Her mouth was too wide, and far, far too firm, Geoff told himself. She was tanned almost as deeply as Cary. No hint of her mother’s charm softened her severe young mien. Ceoff felt a rising antagonism at the sight of her. “Hello!” She put an arm about Tenny but addressed the room at large. “Darling, if we’d known you could come early of course we should have waited!” “I didn’t know it myself until the last minute.” The blue eyes swept the table where the last of the rosebuds lay melting on the green glass plates. “What a dressy meal you appear to have had!” The blue gaze traveled to Geoff and something in its direct inquiry made him uncomfortable. “We’ve been celebrating!” Mrs. Aylesbury said gaily. “Do you know who this is, darling? Geoff Ensloe--your godmother’s son!” Cynthia nodded curtly, kept her arm about the child so that there was no question of shaking hands. “How d’you do? Are you staying in Denver long?” He detected distinct unfriendliness in the question. Deuce take the girl!

What had he done that she should look upon him with such open hostility? “A year,” he replied “He’s going to stay with us. Isn’t that keen?” Cary asked eagerly. Geoff glanced at Miss Nona a little curiously. The happiness had all gone from her face, the warmth from her voice. Something like fear looked out of her soft brown eyes. What a brute of a girl this was, Geoff told himself, whose mere arrival so changed the atmosphere of her home. The Captain had extinguished the fat cigar he had lighted and tossed a napkin over it. The maid, summoned by Miss Nona, murmured something in a low tone to her mistress who in turn murmured back, glancing apprehensively toward her daughter. Cary puffed nervously as his cigarette. Only Tenny seemed happy in Cynthia’s arrival. She kept her thin little arms about the other girl’s waist and when Cynthia said something about running upstairs to wash her hands, Tenny went with her. Geoff tried doggedly but in vain to restore the former gaiety to the party. A blight had fallen, Cary could only smile in sickly fashion, Miss Nona looked from the table to the door and back again. Presently Cynthia returned, still wearing the dark swiss frock which was her office dress but with little curls and ripples testifying to the wet comb she had run through her hair. "I'm starved,” she began as she took her seat “No lunch at all today and--” “No lunch? Oh, Cynthia!” “Absolutely no time for lunch--and I didn’t quarrel with that fact, you may be sure!” She stopped as the maid set a plate before her; raised her eyebrows questionlngly. Miss Nona hurried into speech, “I’m so glad you could come home for a good hot meal, dear. Was it terrible down-town today?” “Pretty hot. Even the tourists felt the heat, and you know they’re usually indefatigable. However, we sold about a peck of abalone rings, and silver bracelets with turquoises in ’em, and shell chains.” “Did you sell any more rings like your jade one?” Tenny’s voice asked interestedly. “Wasn’t it lucky your godmother sent you that just when the lady from Detroit wanted one?” There was an appalled silence. Geoff was maliciously pleased to see the color rise in the girl’s face until it flooded her temples and was lost in the waves of her hair. He asked blandly: “The jade dinner ring? Too bad you didn’t like it. I rather flattered myself it was a bit unusual. I helped my mother select it, you know.” “It was a mistake--Tenny, you shouldn’t--” Miss Nona began agitatedly. Cynthia bit viciously into the roll she had buttered. “It wasn’t a mistake at all! It happened that I needed other things more than I did a ring, and as I had a special customer who wanted it, I sold it. Sorry if your mother will be hurt!” The implication stung the young man. “I hope you don’t think I mean to tell her!” She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “I didn't know. You might feel it your duty to write her about it.” She pushed her plate away. “I don’t seem to be so very hungry, after all. The heat, I guess. Tenny, where’s Hadji? Tell the rascal he’s lying down on the job. He didn’t meet me at the front door tonight.” This time Geoff partook of the feeling which kept them all silent. No matter how much of a dislike you had taken to a girl, it wasn’t pleasant to tell her that her dog was dedd; had been murdered by another dog because he had been allowed out against her orders. He glanced across the table and saw that Miss Nona’s eyes were briinming with tears and that her chin was quivering like that of a terrified child. The sight gave him back his own composure. A girl who could frighten her mother like that deserved anything. Quickly, before Miss Nona could falter out the news or Tenny blunder into it, Geoff spoke. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news of your dog,” he said, real sympathy in his voice. “You see--he got out somehow this afternoon and the dog next door--” Cynthia sprang to her feet “Miss Nona! You didn’t . . . after all I said . . . after rd warned you--” She stopped, visibly fighting down the emotion that shook her. “I beg your pardon, dear! I’m sorry!” She turned to Geoff. “How badly is he hurt? Where is he? Oh, why didn’t you tell me when I first came home instead of letting me--” Tenny’s arms were around her neck, Tenny’s cheek was laid lovingly against hers. “Hadji’s dead, Cynthia,” she said with a child’s wise directness of speech. “He was hurt so bad Geoff had to shoot him to stop his suffering. Don’t cry Cynthia. Geoff let him be hurt long!” “Dead?” She gently loosened Tenny’s arms, took a step toward Geoff. “You shot Hadji?”

"I had to.” Something in the conviction of his voice reached her and she held out her hand. “I understand. Thank you.” With Tenny tagging forlornly in her wake, Cynthia left the dining room and ran up the stairs. Geoff had an uncomfortable conviction that she had gone to her room to cry. Cynthia was driving Geoff downtown. Why she had proposed herself as his chauffeur Geoff did not know. She had come into the old parlor, entirely calm and composed, no traces whatever of tears in her face and asked quietly if she might take the guest down for his luggage. Geoff had been a little astonished at the effect this simple request had upon her family. Miss Nona looked distressed, the Captain cleared his throat, Cary shifted his feet uneasily. What, Geoff demanded of himself, was the matter with this girl that everything she said or did appeared to paralyze her relatives? Was she a lady bully, a girlish tyrant who traded on their love to keep them in a state of subjection to her whims? He set his jaw--Geoff had a nice firm jaw of his own--and rather looked forward to a brush between this Cynthia person and himself. “Pretty sight,” he commented as the car made its swift if unimpressive was down the broad streets. The city was asparkle with lights, blazing against the soft darkness of the summer sky. “Yes. Denver’s pretty,” Cynthia assented absently. They drove for a block or two more in silence which she broke abruptly. “You say you’re going to stay with us for a year?” “Your mother has asked me to,” he replied with cool defensiveness. “That’s all right--I can see Miss Nona will love having you. The only thing--you’ll want to pay board?” The shock of it took his breath away. He felt himself turning scarlet in the darkness. “Naturally,” he began stiffly. “A fellow’s self-respect requires it. I offered to--I insisted, but Mrs. Aylesbury--” “I know,” she answered. “You can pay it to me and not mention it to her.” “To you!” “Yes.” He remembered the Captain’s comment on her gift shop. “An expensive toy!” So that was it! The greedy young grabber needed more money and saw a way to get it without asking her family. “I think I’d rather--I think it would be better for me to pay it to your mother.” “She wouldn’t take it.” “But if I paid it to you and she didn’t know--” She smiled, a faint, rather weary smile that held something of scorn and something of tolerance. “So it’s the effect on Miss Nona you have an eye to, not the preservation of a fellow’s self-respect!” He was silent through sheer annoyance. This was the most unpleasant girl he had ever met. “No use getting angry,” she admonished him. “I’m just trying to make it easy for you, that’s all. I realize that you’ve been put in a difficult position; that you really would hate it, staying with us for a year as a nonpaying guest. So I’m suggesting that you pay your board to me--” “So you can put it into your gift shop!” She slewed around in her seat to give him a cryptic glance. “What d’you know about my gift shop?” “Nothing,” he said curtly. “Only that you have one.” She nodded. “Oh, yes, I have one, all right. And I can use whatever sum you decide on as a financial recompense for the home life we offer you--don’t I put it nicely?--I can use it in my shop.” She laughed, a mysterious, mirthful little laugh which increased Geoff’s irritation. She was finding him funny, was she? “It’s the Odds and Ends, you know.” “I beg your pardon?” “The name of my shop--Odds and Ends.” “I can imagine that describes It very aptly.” To his amazement she pulled the car to the curb, stopped it and offered him her hand. “But why?” asked the dazed young man. “I’m saluting you as a foeman worthy of my steel. I was so afraid you were going to be a polite supine sort of chap, horrified to death of me but covering your consternation with courteous murmurs.” The description amused him. “Taken from life?” “Yes. We’ve had three of that kind in the last year.” “Had ’em? Had ’em where?” “In the house; guests of Miss Nona. It was necessary to get rid of them--since they didn’t pay board!--so I mocked ’em and I shocked ’em--and finally they left.” He digested the inference of this in silence. She started the car again. “I’m in

dead earnest about the board money. Sixty dollars a month--d’you think that’s too much, considering all the petting and the mothering you’ll get from Miss Nona?” “I hate to hear you speak of your mother like that,” he told her severely. “Of course you do,” she soothed him. “You’ve got a mother complex. Comes from having your own mother away so much, I expect. All right--go as far as you like with it. Miss Nona’s a darling. And how about the sixty dollars? Tenny’s father pays seventy-five, but then I buy her clothes out of it, too.” “You buy them! Do you receive Tenny’s board secretly, too?” “Not now,” she sighed. “Mr. Mon-tague--perfect fool that he is!--forgot sent the check to the house one month instead of to the shop.” He asked an anxious question. “D’you spell it with two p’s and, an e?” “No.” “Thank heaven for that!” “Oh, I’d spell it with three x’s and a row of w’s, if that was what the public wanted. Give ’em anything they ask for--that’s my motto. But quaintness is out and straightforward business is in.” “Well, go on about the check. What did your mother do when she discovered you were perpetrating a fraud like that?” “She was shocked, of course.” “And returned the check?” The slender shoulders beside him squared themselves. “No, I wouldn’t let her. I needed it, you see.” Suddenly Geoff began to laugh. It started with a low rumble in his throat, grew to a deep roar and finally assumed such proportions of sound that passers-by stared curiously. “Why?” Cynthia demanded. “Thinking what a jolt my mother would get if she knew you; especially

if she knew what you did with the jade dinner ring.” The car swerved a little. “I said I was sorry about that!” “No need to be--and that wasn’t what I meant. You see, Mother has pictured you all these years as a pretty, fluffy little thing--” “Thanks!” “You’re welcome,” he said affably. “Besides it’s her description, not mine. She even--uh--warned me against your flirting with me--” “Of course. She remembered Miss Nona. But you see I was born in Colorado where clinging vines and pretty coquettes and sweet sentimentalists don’t flourish. Altitude’s too high for ’em, I guess. Now about that sixty dollars--” “My dear Miss Shylock, I would gladly write you a check here and now but I don’t believe the traffic cops would approve of your stopping the car just here. Is my credit good until we reach the hotel?” “You’ll promise not to say a word about it to Miss Nona?” “Why should I? They get no benefit of the money. As it is I gather that they’re called on pretty frequently to help you out with the shop." “Well--put it on that basis then. It’ll be just sixty dollars less I’ll mulct from them every month.” “But listen!” he said in distress. "D’you think I want them to think I’m the kind of guy who’ll sponge on them for a whole year?” “Don’t worry,” she told him. “They’ll think a lot more of you than if you’d reduced friendship to a sordid commercial basis.” “What a queer girl you are!” “Do you think you’re going to like me?” “I’m quite sure I am not,” he assured her. She nodded dispassionately. “Some do--some don’t. Here’s your hotel.” She was still frowning slightly when he returned, holding between his thumb and finger a slip of paper which he handed her. “My first month’s board money. I’m sure you won’t try to collect it twice--

and the canceled check will serve as a receipt!” CHAPTER III A Box of Flowers. He did not see Cynthia again until the next evening at dinner. He had spent a delightful day settling himself in his big room, finally accepting Cary’s invitation to see some of the sights of Denver in the late afternoon. Geoff noticed that the boy consulted his wristwatch frequently as six o’clock approached. When the car was finally headed toward home he said hesitatingly: “Old man, I’d appreciate it if you’d forget to mention this drive of ours to Cynthia!” “For Pete’s sake, why?” Geoff demanded. “Does she fear the contamination of my presence on your pure young soul?” Cary grinned. “She’s much more likely to hold you up to me as an example of what the industrious young man does to forward his career. You see,” he went on ingratiatingly, “I’ve lost my job, and I’d just as soon Cynthia wouldn’t know it until I land another. I’ll pick up something else in a day or two and then I’ll break it to her gently that I’ve bettered myself. Till then I’d just as soon she didn’t know I was fired from my last position.” “Would she raise a row?” Geoff asked curiously. “Would she! Cynthia’s the grandest little raiser of rows you ever knew.” “I can imagine,” Geoff said dryly. "Well, your dark secret is safe with me. Maybe I can land something for you in the laboratory.” “Don’t bother. I never have any trouble getting a job. It’s holding ’em,” he explained ingenuously, “that ties me into bow-knots.” Cynthia was home when they arrived. She eyed her brother a little sharply, “Did you pick Geoff up on your way home?” And to Geoff: “I didn’t know you intended to start work today.” “I didn’t," he said offhandedly. “As a matter of fact, I met Cary--ah--on the street, and he gave me a lift." That the street was the one which ran in front of the house he did not think it necessary to explain. “I want to buy a car of my own,” he went on. “I’m going to explore the mountains on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. They’re not at all like our eastern mountains, you know. They--” “I know,” she interrupted shortly, “I spent two years in the East.” “You did? And never let us know you were there?” “I was in college. Your mother was abroad with your father.” “What college?” “Smith?” “Did you finish?” Miss Nona’s gentle voice intervened. “No, she didn’t finish, Geoff. I was so glad when she decided to give it up and come home! I suppose college life is all right for girls these days, but somehow I never could be quite reconciled to my little girl’s living so far from her family.” She smiled at Geoff. “I behaved awfully well about letting her go. I didn’t say a word against it though I cried myself to sleep night after night after she left. And behold the reward of virtue! Cynthia came home of her own accord after the second year.” Geoff shot her a questioning glance. What had changed her mind? She didn’t seem like a girl who would stop half-way through her college career. Cynthia rose suddenly. “Dinner’s late. I’ll go and speak to Marguerite.” Geoff delighted in this appellation for the dusky maid-of-all-work. It fitted in exactly with this casual, contradictory family. Only Cynthia struck a discordant note in the general harmony. Captain Cary was courtly and gracious, Miss Nona was charming, Cary’s light-heartedness was attractive, Tenny was an unusually interesting little girl. But Cynthia! Geoff, who was on good terms with almost everybody he knew, found himself actually disliking the girl. He was uneasily aware that she tolerated him as his mother’s son rather than accepted him for those winning qualities which other girls had given him to understand he possessed. He was saved from egotism by a healthy realization of his own defects. Nevertheless it was a new and rather painful experience to find that this small brown girl whose one beauty was her blue eyes observed these defects also. Dinner tonight was in noticeable contrast with that of the evening before. The food was abundant and well-cooked but there were no fancy frills of mushrooms and ice cream rosebuds. Broiled steak, creamed potatoes, tomato salad, cherry dumplings with hard sauce —that constituted the meal. Marguerite’s cap and apron had lost a little of their crispness. Only the flower centerpiece was as beautiful: pink snapdragons, tonight, with baby’s-breath and cornflowers. “From your garden?” he asked Miss Nona. “Yes. Cynthia fusses if I work out there very much but I love it.” (TO BE CONTINUED.).

“My First Month’s Board Money--I’m Sure You Won’t Try to Collect It Twice.”