Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1883 — GOLD AND GILT. [ARTICLE]

GOLD AND GILT.

Bhe was a very pretty girl, and did her lyest, in an innocent sort of a way, to let other people know it; and she could not help thinking as she walked along the Elthaxn road, that keeping company with Tom Dawlish—who was just a plain, Jbonest, hard-working young fellow—was rather a Waste of time, and that marrying him would be altogether throwing herself away. Her refleetions oame to an end at the door of Messrs, Bradbury’s offioe and she walked in, wholly intent on the bill she had to pay. A smart looking young man received the money; and when the receipt was made ont,andshe turned to go, she found that the shower which had threatened for some time was ooming down with a vengeance. , “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, and I have’nt any umbrella.” “Wait here a few minutes, Miss; it will soon be over,” said the smart young man. And then, having aooepted his offer of shelter for a minute oi two, thinking he “was a very nice-looking young gentleman.* (as i he afterward described him to the oook,) and that he had beautiful hair —it war. no nicely curled —and he had a little dark mustache and wore such a pretty blue neck-tie. Oh! he was very nioe-looking indeed. “Are you Mr. Poole’s sister?” he asked after a few minutes’ conversation. Mary hashed as she replied truthfully —for she was far too good a girl even to equivocate—that she was not such a disinguished individual, but only the housemaid and chambermaid combined, and then he asked her what her name was; and with another blnsh she told him it was Clara, but Mrs. Poole said it was too fine a name for a servant, and called her Mary. “I shall call you Glara,”he said—“shall I?” he added, with an appealing glanoe. Mary felt her heart beat faster; something seemed to tell her that her destiny had come, and she had no words to say; so he followed up his successful sally with another one. “Do yon ever get out of an evening for a walk?” “Sometimes,” she said softly. “Will you go out with me for a walk next time?” he asked. “It wouldn’t be right; yon are quite -strange, you see.” she said, slowly. “Oh, we’ll soon get over that, you know. Perhaps you are engaged, though?” Mary’s inconvenient heart gave a great thump, for here was a good practical question, which certainly showed that he meant business—that is to say, matrimony. “No, Tm not; but Pm wanted to be.” Not a very luoid answer, but he evidently understood it. “Who to?” he ashed coaxingly. “Well, perhaps I oughtn’t to say his v name,” she answered slowly; for in this, the moßt impel taiat moment in her life,a she felt it to be, words seemed altogether to fail her. “What is he?” -‘‘He's—he’s a carpenter.” Mary never felt the truth more difficult to tell in all her life. “A carpenter! be said in a telling tone of injury not uuiuixed with scorn. “Well, of Course, if I am not better than a carpenter—” “Oh, you are; you are sir,” said Mury, in her excitement patting out a hand and vesting it tot teyfr a moment on his sleeve. M ury lost lief Beikrt to the smart young man with the Hue neck tie and the well oiled hair. He never said anything more definite than he said that first day; but he was always ready to take her out, and most particular about her dress; and the result was that all her little lioanl of sav-

Inga went in more or leas ill-choeen finery and Tom Dawlish waa forgotten. There was only ene thing she refused to do, and that was, she would not give up her Saturday afternoon to him. She had always had it to take little Franky Poole out for a long walk on that day, it being his half-holiday, and she would never consent to his being allowed to run about wild in Kensington Gardens, as Alfred Hill (for so the smart young man was called) suggested, while she walked abmt with her fine sweetheart. “He is such a wild little fellow; nobody knows what he might do if he had the chance.” “Ah! yon don’t care for me,” said the hero of the coal merchant’s office, and the proud recipient of thirty shillings a week income. No answer oame save that her clasped hands made one in their dumb movement of contradiction. Not love him! Why, every moment of the day was devoted to thinking of him; her work was neglected, her money spent, her place in a fair way of being forfeited, and poor Tom Dawlish nearly heart-bro-ken, and yet he said she did not love him! “Ah! you don’t care for me,” he repeated, artfully enough; for no avowal of his own feelings had ever escaped his lips. “Oh! I do, I dof’ she said; and covering her face with her hands, let her head droop down npon his shoulder.

CIIAPTEB 11. “I hate school,” Frank Poole informed her one morning, as he sat on the table while she sewed a button on his trousers. “I should like to be a sailor.” “Goodness ! Master Franky, what’s put that into your head ?” “Oh, nothing ! only Tom Dawlish was telling me about it; what they did in wrecks yon know, and all that. lehonld like to be on a raft, I should ;” and he drew his naked toes up on the table and wriggled them about at the thought of the great things he would do. “Tom’s ooming to-day, I heard mamma say so ; and if he isn’t gone when I come back this afternoon, I shall ask him more abont it.” ‘Td tell him not to go filling the child’s head with such nonsense, only I don’t want to get in his way,” Mary thought. Bat somehow Tom got into her way that afternoon. “Look here, Mary,” he said: “I want to speak to yon. It isn’t that I want yon to look at me if yon haven’t a mind to though goodness knows Td do anything for you ; but I don’t want to see a nioe girl like yon a lowering of yourself by walking out with a ohap like Alfred Hill.”

“What’s it got to do with you ?” she asked angrily. “Why, just this, that I’ve found out a bit about him, and he’s only laughing at yon, and thinking you are a nioe looking girl when you are dressed up, to walk about with, but as for marryiifg you, he’ll no more do it than that,” and he snapped his fingers, though what that action had to do with Mr. Alfred Hill’s intentions he did not explain. “Why, he’s going to marry the daughter of Mr. Brooks, what travels for the firm, that’s what he’s going to do. Ask him, and see if he ean deny it. Why, it’s ooming off directly, only she’s nothing to look at, so he isn’t fond of showing her off; bnt she’s got some money, she has, and plays on the piano, and looks like a lady." “How do yon know ?” Mary asked, her very lips turning white, for her exacting heart knew that he had fallen off lately, and that he was not what he had been in the spring (the summer was over.) Not that for a single moment she believed Tom’s words.

“Why, I work there, and the servant told me. Beside, I’ve seen him go there courting.” “I don’t believe it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself ;” and she rushed away to hide her gathering tears and frightened face. She wrote to him, asking her to meet her that night; bnt he replied with an excuse that made her heart sick. He would meet her to-morrow (Saturday afternoon) jn Kensington gardens if she liked, be said, and to this she consented, and for the first time, and for his sake, was false to her charge of Franky. ‘•You run about, Master Franky, dear,” Bhe said; “I want to talk to a friend of mine—but don’t go out of sight;” and then in her bewilderment she forgot all abont him. Alfred Hill looked rather boared than otherwise, but he was smiling and shiny as ever. She hardly greeted him when ho appeared, but she looked' at him with all the admiration she had ever felt for him intensified by her fear. He sat down beside her, and elegantly crossed his legs, began tapping his highly-pol-ished boots with his bone headed cane. “Alfred,” she said, crossing her bands and looking at him straight in the face, “is it true that you are going to get tnarried direotly?” “Who’s told you so?” “It isn’t any acoount who told; is it true that you are swing to marry Miss

piw4 and has money, and—” The tears came into her eyes, and her lipe quivered with anguish. “Oh, it isn’t true! I know it isn’t T, and she touched his hand in her dismay, and looked up into his face with all her heart’s story written in her eyes. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be, and so there’s the long and short of it. It’s no use making a fuss abont it, my dear girl.” “But it isn’t? it isn’t?” she said appealingly. “Well, yes, it is true,” he said slowly, not daring to look her in the face; so you may as well know it at onoe.” She stood up before him. “True! Do you mean to say, Alfred, after all that’s passed between ns, that yon are going to be married to some one else?”

“I really can’t understand your ‘what has passed between us.’ Yon really oouldn’t think I was going to marry you?" . “Why?” “Well, I don’t wish to bnrt your feelings, but consider the difference in onr positions. One walks out with a pretty servant girl, bat one doesn’t foarry her.” “Yon are not a gentleman as yon think yourself,” she said slowly. “You are dressed like one, but yon are just a bit of a clerk, not any better than a respectable girl like me. A gentleman doesn’t try to take a girl’s good name and win her heart as yon have done.’ Mary often wondered how she fought her battle as she did; but she seemed to have no feeling then, only to realize what would come after. “I am very sorry that you let yourself fall in love with me,” he aaid, tapping his boot again. “I fancied that yon would have had more pride, at any rate, till yon were asked.” “More pride ! What do yon take me for?” she asked, her cheeks flashing. “Do you think I’d go out with one, and let him talk to me as yon have done, if I hadn’t oared for him? I have too much pride for that, and I shouldn’t be fit Com pany for any honest man if I hadn’t. And yon know it; but it isn’t yon that I like, but the man I took yon for, and he isn’t there at aU.”

“Well, I’m sorry you are disappointed in your hope of bettering yourself by marrying above yon, and I think, after all you’ve said, we’d better part.” “The sooner the better,” and she let him go, and then sat down and sobbed her poor heart oat, and spent the bitterest hours of her life beneath the trees from whioh the leaves were falling. Then she got up to look for Franky ; he was nowhere to be seen. She called, bnt no answer oame. With a fear that deadened all other feeling she ran to and fro in a wild endeavor to find him. She asked the polioeman at the gate ; he had not seen him. An hour passed in fruitlestsearch, and then, pale with fear, and renjbling in every limb, shewent ho me to relate the terrible news. Just as she got to the door she saw through the gathering shadows Tom Dawlish, and in his arms a little figure, which her heart told her was Master Franky. “I met this young gentleman as he was running off to be a sailor, and brought him book.” “Running away ! Why, how were you going to get to the sea ?” “I was going to walk there,” said Franky, stontly. • “You would have killed your poor mamma.” ' “Mamma,” asked Franky Poole the next day, “would it kill yon if I ran away to sea ?” “Yes, dear, I think it would.” “Oh, well, then, I won’t,” he answered patronizingly. It was spring time again when Tom Dawish asked Mary a question onoe mora He had a good situation, had a prospeot of a rise ; and he’d always been daft on her, and he wanted to know if she could love him. She looked up with a face that had grown pale and thin, and said simply,— “I don’t think that Ido now, Tom ; but if you like to wait I think it’ll coma’ ' “Bless you!” said Tom ; ‘Td wait seven years sooner than lose you.” But he haid only to wait ona “He is gold and the other was gilt,” said Mary on her wedding day ; and she was right.