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Show CROSSMATCHED CROSS-MATCHED By MARTHA M. WILLIAMS lj by AloClure NewjvLiier syudioai.) IW.SU service) GWEN flung up her arms, yawning, whereupon Elise asked: "How's the book? Any good?" Gwen yawned again. "Deadly stupid, stu-pid, writer-man hasn't got a thing to say and keeps on saying it in all the moods and tenses." "You shock me deeply !" Elise flung back rising. "A gift book, too. Whatever What-ever shall we sav to the author-sender?" "Write him straight off say we can't wait to thank him till after reading," Gwen counseled. "But you don't intend to tell him what you think?" from Elise. Gwen sighed saying: "Truth's not merely brutal but unpopular. Why hurl large chunks of It at a poor soul who never did you the least bit of harm?" "You forget " from Elise. "He Insisted In-sisted on sitting out all four dances he had written himself down for at the Valentine party when the music was making my feet dance In spite of me." The two were real friends, in spite of being kinswomen, and doomed to live in the same wide plantation, miles from everywhere, but in auto-reach auto-reach of almost anywhere a well-conditioned fancy might choose to stray. Elise was statuesque, Gwen roguishly pretty. They were neither exactly rich nor poor. Elise herself was bidding her time, being the sort that wears well, and reaches full blow around thirty. Long before that time Owen would marry somebody somebody other than Newell Blair whom she had teased and flouted since the era of short frocks, in spite of his money, and his pedigree. Both were exactly what Elise had set her mind on therefore she waited. Charles Joseph Seaforth had seemed manna from heaven he was good looking, had an air of distinction. Elise had done her best to make him see In Gwen an enchantress, but had had her trouble for nothing. His book had come to her, the first copy off the press he wrote, with a florid Inscription In-scription that was yet prudently vague. Craftily she had given Gwen the first reading, hoping by doing so to quicken her interest in the book's writer. Gwen had turned the tables by insisting in-sisting that Elise was in courtesy bound to acknowledge the gift at once. Frowning Elise set hers-elf at the task, but stopped short after the dateline date-line to stare at a resplendent car purring purr-ing to a halt at the front steps. Seaforth Sea-forth and Newell Blair sprang from It and rushed inside almost without knocking. Elise held out both hands to them as she rose, crying: "Luck indeed in-deed 1 Saves me a hard job trying to tell you all we think of THE BOOK in writing, I've only part of an opinion opin-ion now. Gwen hasn't let me read more than snatches says she can't eat nor sleep until she knows how it all turns out." "Mighty kind of her," from Seaforth. Sea-forth. Blair scowled hard. "Maybe I can break the spell." he growled, making for the back piazza. Gwen's special happy haunt. In a minute he was back, book in hand, Gwen tucked possessively pos-sessively under his arm. "I am taking her for a drive in the new car, so she shan't pester you two any more," he said, tossing the book to Elise. "Mighty glad to see you but really real-ly this is 'so sudden,' " she smiled at Seaforth. "I simply had to come to know what you thought nothing el?e matters mat-ters nothing in all the world," he said huskily. "Somehow the book is selling amazingly or I shouldn't have dared it is all I have, you know except hope and I-Iove." Elise felt herself profoundly shaken, but completely dazed. "How can you like me? A plain country girl, when you have seen so much of cities?" "Because you are my dream. What I hoped for and never thought to find," he said stepping back a pace, the better to look into her eyes. "You know I shouldn't be here, but for Blair the noblest fellow alive. You see, I wrote him asking whether he was my rival that was my black dread he had so much, I, almost nothing. He answered me, man to man : 'To me there is Just one possible possi-ble wife In all the world. Her name is Gwendoline Trevor unless she comes to me of her own good will, I shall be a lone man all my life.' And then actually he came for me brought me to his home two days back rested me there, and heartened me for the crisis of my fate. Funny he says you are the finest woman living liv-ing much too fine for the general run of men but he could not love you, even if he had never seen Gwen." Elise choked silently she held out her hand to him. He laid his- cheek upon it, reverently as one might touch an altar. A little silence fell between them, then as the purring motor sounded distantly, Elise put her other oth-er hand upon the adoring lover's head, saying: "I will do my best to give you back your love." The double wedding six months later was, of course, a social event. Looking on acidly the Widow Martin said : "Cross-matched teams if ever I saw 'em," whereupon Squire Burgess chuckled: "Glad you think so Susnn. Cross matches were the best teams ever I drove and I've been at the business full fifty years." |