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Show The IHfesi ibie Oracle Lasfacif By ETHEL HUESTON O Bobbi-Mtnill Co. WNU S.rvlc. THE STORY THUS FAR Left orphans by a tragic automobile accident which claimed the lives their mother and father, three sisters, Helen, Adele and "Limpy," are visited by their Aunt Olympia, politically minded wife of Senator Alencon Delaporte Slopshire. She Insists that the girls return with her to Washington, to make their home with them. In addition to loving the girls. Aunt Olympia knows they will be a terrific political asset. Senator Slopshire has as his political opponent one Brother Wilkie, a minister, whose political campaign Is furthered by seven "unspeakable brats" who sit on the rostrum with him while he makes speeches. Aunt Olympia and the Senator, kind and loving, nevertheless know that their three nieces will mean votes for the Senator. Senator Slopshire, a pleasantly foggy individual who depends on the astuteness of his wife, prepares for their coming. Though Limpy, the young ;st, is 16. and Helen, the oldest, is 21, the Senator buys them all the toys and gifts he can find, feeling that "children" should be occupied. When they first meet their "Uncle Lancy," as he Is to be known, the girls take him to their united bosom. Soon Adele, most beautiful of the sisters, meets Len Hardesty, publicity man for Brother Wilkie. Though It Is Len's Job to help defeat the Senator, he promptly falls In love with Adele. Olympia buys an automobile house-trailer which will accommodate the five of them, and from which the Senator will campaign. Then she decides to hire a publicity agent for the Senator, securing the services of Dave Cooper. CHAPTER IV Continued 7 "How can I drum up votes for the Governor," continued Len, "if I'm going to be upset over the Opposition all summer? Do you want to nip the budding career of a rising young genius?" "I'd love to. If you consider yourself your-self a budding genius, which most people don't. Thanks, Len. I'll call him first thing in the morning." "You'll call him? . . . Haven't you called him! Haven't you cinched it? . . . Thanks for that, my darling dar-ling old dragon!" he said, a ray of light breaking over his face. "I'll land him first. I know every sofa he sits on . . . Tough luck, old dear; the Governor's hiring an escort es-cort for the brats if he has to add an extra per cent to pay for him. Good-by, dear beautiful angel," he said to Adele. "For your sake, I tear myself away to corral that menace." The girls sat quite motionless until un-til he had dashed from the room. Aunt Olympia contentedly lighted a cigarette. "Are you going to let him get away with it?" gasped Adele. "My dear," said Aunt Olympia, "in politics you never allow grass to grow where the Opposition is going go-ing to plant his foot. I tried to get Cecil this morning but he is up in New York writing up that model murder case for the tabloids. If Len Hardesty knows every sofa in Manhattan, he's had entirely too much experience to associate with you my dears." CHAPTER V On the next morning at eleven o'clock, Aunt Olympia received Cecil Ce-cil Dodd in the sitting room. She received him alone, having with difficulty dif-ficulty hardened her heart to the girls' importunities, for they, eager curiosity doubly whetted by the united unit-ed opposition of Uncle Lancy and Len Hardesty and by Aunt Olym-pia's Olym-pia's defense, were eager for a glimpse of him. Aunt Olympia, for the only time, withstood their pleas. Even Limpy's "Aw, Aunt Olympia," did not move her. "I've been thinking of our talk the other day," she began at once. "Did I understand you to say you would like to try your hand at campaigning?" campaign-ing?" "I'm crazy to," he said boyishly. "I've applied for a job every place under the sun, but nobody will take me because I have no experience; and how the deuce can I get experience experi-ence when nobody will try me out? . . . Maybe you could give me a recommendation," he suggested, "No, I can't do that," she said flatly. ''I don't know whether you're any good or not and I'm careful about my recommendations. But maybe I could give you a job a very small job, of course. But it would be a starter." Cecil Dodd was so surprised he couldn't say a word. Refuse a recommendationand rec-ommendationand give him a job! It seemed almost unethical. "Experience is worth more than money," he murmured, devoutly. "Not to us," she admitted. "Anyhow "Any-how it'll be something and we'll pay your expenses, and if anybody can teach you the racket, Dave Cooper can . . . With some help from me . . . You see, Cece, this isn't like the usual campaign. We've got our young nieces with us and we're going go-ing to take them along. Those girls are going to be our best asset in this campaign and we want someone some-one not quite so hard-boiled as Dave to do full justice to their vote appeal. And since the girls will be around constantly, we'd like someone some-one of agreeable disposition and some social experience to be a sort of companion to them. And we think you'll do all right. You'll take orders or-ders from Dave, of course, and do what he tells you and go where you're sent But your main job will be handling our end of the game." Cecil Dodd was boyishly delighted. delight-ed. When the first moment of reverent rev-erent and worshipful awe had passed he found voice again. "Mrs. Slopshire," he said earnestly, earnest-ly, "I'll work like a dog; I'll work day and night." Having come to this amicable agreement. Aunt Olympia asked him to stay and meet the girls. He accepced the invitation gratefully but Aunt Olympia could see that his mind was less on them than on the great opportunity which a bounteous bounte-ous Heaven had so surprisingly bestowed be-stowed upon him. He responded courteously to the introductions but seemed not even to notice Adele's jyes. "Not as good a reporter as Len Hardesty," thought Aunt Olympia. "Len hasn't overlooked a lash." The girls, considerably to their surprise, found him pleasant, even likable, and a decided contrast to the explosively verbose Len Hardesty. Hardes-ty. He was slight in build, not tall, but lithe, with a suggestion of muscular mus-cular strength in his easy movements. move-ments. His voice was low, almost diffident, his smile boyishly winsome. win-some. He dressed with that studied and expensive carelessness that is so revealing to the practiced eye. "Well, you may as well begin now as anytime," said Aunt Olympia. Olym-pia. "Take a memorandum, will you?" He hastened to comply, drawing out his fountain pen and a small, elegant date book in limp leather. "Remind the Senator or remind me to remind him to be sure to write up and tell the farmer at Shires that's our place up home to have an extra suit of farm clothes for the Senator to borrow when he j speaks at the Granges." The girls talked him over when he had gone. They agreed that Len Hardesty had been unjustly prejudiced preju-diced and that Cecil was a nice boy and they could stand having him around. They thought his eager enthusiasm en-thusiasm for the job rather pathetic. "Yes, it's pathetic," assented Aunt Olympia. "Cece is all right. The trouble is that he's always been able to do what he wanted to instead in-stead of what he had to. He has enough money to live on, so he's never nev-er had to file his nose on the grindstone. grind-stone. It takes grindstone to make a newspaper man." "He's really what you would call a sweet child," Helen wrote to Brick Landis. "He seems so young and so unspoiled, and yet Aunt Olympia says he's had his own way all his life and had everything he has ever wanted. He is taking this job with such deadly seriousness that she is beginning to fear he will neither amuse us nor drive Len Hardesty mad, which was her main object He began bringing up huge volumes on politics to get Aunt Olympia's opinion of them, but she stopped that. She said he could get his opinions opin-ions from her and Dave Cooper. He has bought a new, perfectly gorgeous, gor-geous, simply huge, brief case and a new portable typewriter. And whenever when-ever he is not sitting raptly in the Senate gallery gazing down at his candidate and taking notes of every ev-ery breath he draws, he is at the Press Club trying to make 'contacts.' 'con-tacts.' I just wonder. Brick, if you take politics seriously enough. You didn't pay thirty dollars for a brief case and buy a new typewriter." Aunt Olympia went with Helen and Adele one afternoon to a large cocktail party the invitations had said "tea." It was at the home of an outstanding Republican senator; they remembered that later, with some bitterness. Adele, left alone for a few minutes, was approached by a man, comparatively young, quite handsome, whom Adele instinctively in-stinctively labeled "a foreigner of some sort" "I met you just after you came in. Miss Rutherford," he said pleasantly. pleas-antly. "I am Gabriel d'Allotti. I couldn't possibly expect you to remember re-member me in that crowd and that confusion, but by the same token, you could not possibly expect me not to remember you in any crowd or any confusion. You are unforgettable." unfor-gettable." Adele smiled pleasantly. But she remembered Len Hardesty's warning, warn-ing, "Beware of embassies and attaches!" at-taches!" "Are you with one of the embassies?" embas-sies?" she asked. "Alas, no! I have no such importance. impor-tance. I am just a young man trying try-ing to get along. But I know the embassy crowd and have friends among them, so I get around. May I bring you a drink?" "Not now, thanks." "To tell the truth, I am one of about a million foreigners trying to get the true American picture. I do free-lance correspondence for a few foreign papers and magazines, and naturally I am collecting my impressions for a book on America." "If you get the American picture, you see better than I do," she admitted. ad-mitted. "It looks a hodgepodge to me. Like modern painting. You can't tell whether that pink splash is a lady's arm or a platter of fried liver with onions! And then it turns out to be a bunch of grapes." He laughed appreciatively. "I find the same difficulty, both with art and with America. But I am young and brave. I shall die struggling. Do you like Washington?" "Oh, very much." "Of course you get the right slant on it," he conceded. "It helps a good deal to be on the inside looking out and around, instead of, as I am, on the outside, waiting my turn at the knothole." "Oh, but that's my trouble! I'm on the outside, too." "You can't be far outside in the home of Senator Slopshire. He knows his America. I have often wondered about your senators. Do they act at home as they do on the floor?" "Um, something the same. Uncle Lancy wipes his glasses; and blushes through his thinning hair when he is flattered." "But what does he talk about? Does he merely say, as I would, how very beautiful you are? Does he complain about the eggs being overdone? Does he read ' his speeches to you?" Adele laughed. "He reads them to Helen, but she asked for it," she admitted. "Helen is trying to learn politics from the ground up. She is my older sister." "Dear me, is she going to run for something?" "Maybe. Anyhow, she made up her mind to learn it She goes to committees and reads the Congressional Congres-sional Record and at night they go to the library and argue for hours over how many air defense guns are required here and there, and whether peace is preserved by more armaments or by disarming, and which end of a boat is the proper ijii) "Why, that's Gabriel d'Allotti!" place to put guns and how many times the new destroyers can be torpedoed before they blow up all that sort of thing." "Dear me! It sounds quite horrifying. horrify-ing. Doesn't he expound it all to you, too?" "Oh, no. I don't listen. Limpy and I don't care for that sort of thing. We just pick out the best nuts and think of other things." "Simply profound of you, I should say. More important things! Like, Where's your yellow basket?" "Oh, nothing half as profound as that If we lost our yellow basket, Uncle Lancy would demand a congressional con-gressional investigation and get it back for us." Gabriel d'Allotti went away presently. pres-ently. He had not seen Helen before. be-fore. Naturally, seeing Adele, one looked no further. He did not make the mistake of asking Adele to point out her sister. He was not so clumsy as that. He asked someone else, a stranger, where she was Senator Slopshire's niece. The stranger, being be-ing a man, pointed to Adele. "No, I mean the other one; the studious one; her sister." "Oh, yes, there is another one . . . Let's see . . . Oh, there she is; over by that window. The tall girl in the black hat and veil." Gabriel d'Allotti introduced himself him-self to Helen. "I've been having a delightful chat with your very lovely love-ly sister," he said with engaging candor. "She tells me that you and I have a great deal in common; that we are a pair of young innocents in the primary department of the big college of politics." "Oh, I'm not up to the primary department yet," said Helen. "I'm still in the cradle. But I am trying so hard to understand things and making very little headway." "We must collaborate," he said. "We are having the same trouble. We have learned the 'c,' and the 'a,' and the 't'; now we must digest our wisdom and combine it into 'cat' Perhaps two digestions, like heads, are better than one." "It sounds promising," she said. "I confess that half the time I just listen and frown and don't even try to digest it I keep hoping one acquires ac-quires it gradually, like suntan, from persistent application. Perhaps Per-haps between us we could get the 'c' and the 'a' and the 't' into a little lit-tle kitten, at least, if not into a full-grown full-grown cat to begin with." "It's a bargain," he said heartily, shaking hands with her. "I shall go at once and make diplomatic overtures over-tures tp your aunt" Inside of five minutes he had Aunt Olympia's attention. "Mrs. Slopshire,'.' he said ingratiatingly, ingrati-atingly, "it is only fair to inform you, in strictest confidence, that I have been completely enchanted with your very lovely niece. How does one go about getting permission permis-sion to call?" "One comes to tea." "Pardon my persistence. How soon does one come?" "Tomorrow. It will be nice to have you. We're living very quietly of course almost in seclusion because be-cause of that terrible tragedy but I do want the girls to pick up what amusement they can." "I'll be at my most humorous, I promise you. I'll go around and collect some good stories for them." "Don't!" she ejaculated. "If you're hearing the same ones I am, they are not fit for their young ears. Bring yourself and leave your repertoire rep-ertoire at home." "Who's that man?" she asked, turning to a friend who stood near. "That one making tracks for the punch bowl. With too much lotion on his hair." "That? Why, that's Gabriel d'Allotti! d'Al-lotti! You must know him. He goes everyplace." "Oh, yes, I know him all right But I've had so much trouble with that Alencon that I try not to pick up any foreign names . . . Gabriel d'Allotti . . . Yes, I know him." "He is very interesting," Helen wrote to Brick Landis a couple of weeks later. "And isn't it strange that he hasn't fallen in love with Adele? Well, he certainly has enlivened en-livened my study of the American system. He disagrees with me on nearly everything. He has the foreign for-eign idea of maintaining peace that is, by bigger and better armaments. arma-ments. You'd almost think he was going to take out naturalization papers, pa-pers, he gets so wrought-up over America's lack of preparedness. "To tell the truth he knows a lot more than I do about the American system, though he doesn't approve of most of it He comes to the house quite often and once he went with me to one of Uncle Lancy's committees and we did agree on one thing: that it is mighty hard for a dozen men sitting around a table to agree on a policy to save the nation; especially when the plan goes from them to the Senate, then to the House, back to the Senate, and back to conference again; and when they do finally agree on something, some-thing, there's still the White House to reckon with. "You needn't worry, darling. He hasn't the suggestion of a crush on me. You can't fool women about that Sometimes we think they have when they haven't, but we never think they haven't when they have. We're not that dumb. But we are both interested in the same things and it really is more exciting to argue with him than with Uncle Lancy. Uncle Lancy's always afraid of hurting my feelings, and Mr. d'Allotti isn't. But he isn't my type. I like 'em red headed and a bit roughed up. "Oh, Brick, the session is nearly over and nothing has happened! Wouldn't you think one really big thing an important thing might happen while I am here, so I could get a glimpse beneath the surface?" CHAPTER VI Early in May, Aunt Olympia decided de-cided it was time for the assistant assist-ant director of publicity, Cecil Dodd, to begin sending stories to the home papers. Olympia, who was an indefatigable inde-fatigable maker of notes, had a list of "points" ready to start the campaign cam-paign on her own and the girls' behalf; be-half; the Senator, except for incidental inci-dental remarks in passing, was to be left to Dave Cooper. So she sent for Cecil and, at their laughing insistence in-sistence on its educational value, permitted the girls to listen in. "Now, you see, Cece," began Olympia, with great gusto, "politics is an elaborate and intricate system sys-tem of build-up. That's alL Just build-up." Cecil took his limp leather loose-leaf loose-leaf notebook from his mono-grammed mono-grammed thirty-dollar brief case and, with a U. S. Senate pencil the Senator had given him made a note of "build-up." "A lot of it has to be done in advance ad-vance because it must be gradual. An untimely climax gums up the works. It has to be a gradual ascent as-cent to the wind-up. Dave, as you know, is already at work tmilding up the Senator's record and so forth but we women of the Senator's household must have our domestic build-up. The woman-vote, you know. Though a lot of males fall pretty hard for that domestic angle, an-gle, too." Cecil, raptly attentive, made a note of "domestic angle." "Now, in the first place, you must announce that certain salient facts were gleaned from Mrs. Slopshire in an interview . . . This is an interview inter-view . . . I'm going to answer the questions you would ask me if you had enough experience. Now, in answer an-swer to what should be your first question, I reply, with deep feeling, no, we have not as yet given a moment's mo-ment's thought to the coming campaign. cam-paign. That is left to the future. We the Senator and I are so happy hap-py in having these dear children with us, our home life is so full, so serene Never say 'exciting,' Cece, for your life! Say 'satisfying.' Our home life is so serene, so satisfying satisfy-ing you might say serenely satisfying, satis-fying, if you like that so far we have been entirely wrapped up in quiet family interests." (TO BE COWIM'EDJ |