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Show HL LOVER'S QUARREL I CORNER By Loura M. Welch 1MUST HAVE been about ten or eleven, a rather intense little girl with a twenty year old sister whom I adored. She was in love with a young druggist, a handsome . young man and she always kept a large photo-I photo-I graph of him In 3 Minutt the center of our Fiction vno- usually with a small fluted bowl of pansies or violets in front of it. Bess had been going with another an-other young man in town and Clyde had had another girl; then suddenly they only made dates with each other. One night about one o'clock my sister came upstairs to the room we shared and came to bed and cried nearly all night. Several times I asked her what was the matter and she'd say, "Nothing, honey, go back to sleep." I knew she and Clyde had been to a dance and I was sure they had quarreled. The next morning she still wouldn't tell me why she had cried so much. Later on in the day I went into the parlor to practice my scales and there was his photograph right there in front of me. I couldn't bear to look at it. He had made my sister cry. He had hurt her dreadfully dread-fully and I hated him. I hated him so much I couldn't bear to see his picture. I took the picture and slid it along the baseboard behind the piano. I gave it a hard shape and was sure it would never be found again. Two or three days went by. My "It was a hateful sort of thing for him to do," Bess said. "I know he's just laughing to himself, him-self, thinking how be put it over on me." sister was still sad. I wondered if she and Clyde would ever make up their quarrel. Some of her friends got together to-gether and decided to .'o something some-thing to help them make up. They came down to the house and brought Clyde with them, stayed a short time and went off leaving Clyde and Bess together. to-gether. But it didn't do any good. Clyde left early, too, and my sister was just as sad as ever. One day I heard her talking to one of her girl friends. "It was a hateful sort of thing for him to do. He could have asked me, you know. That would have been the honorable honora-ble thing to do, even if he had wanted to give it to another girl." She swallowed a sob and went on, "I know he's just laughing to himself, him-self, thinking how he put it over on me." I didn't have the slightest idea what she was talking about. THE WHOLE TOWN was inter- ested in the quarrel. They'd been expecting a big church wedding wed-ding with all the fixings and were disappointed. As for myself, I Just got madder and madder. One morning I was sent uptown for the mail and met Clyde on the street. I started to go by him without with-out speaking, which 1 knew was very rude, but I didn't care If it was. He reached out and caught my hand. "Look, honey, don't be mad at me," he said. "Don't you know this thing is hurting me too?" I said angrily, "You made her cry." He turned a little pale and looked very serkus. "Did she really cry, Becky?" "Yes, she does . . . did, I mean. That's why I took your picture and bid it behind our old piano, "You took the photograph?" I nodded. "It's behind the piano." "And all this time I thought she took it away because she was going go-ing to put another one there." Quite suddenly I began to understand. under-stand. "And she thought you took it to give to another girl." He took my hand again. "Look, I'm going home with you, Becky. Will you tell Bess what you've Just told me?" I nodded. And we went home together to-gether and I told her. There was a wedding after alL |