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Show Suitors of SSj SV KENNETT ' -A ArStw&imk 4w WIEL1SSA COULD PROMPT A BAD ACTOR. Mrs. Merriwid had been out on the front porch so long that her maternal maiden Aunt Jaue grew anxious and, throwing a light wrap over her head, ' went out to remonstrate. Her niece was sitting on the swing lounge, bending bend-ing forward, with her upturned face resting on the palms of her hands. Her expression was pensive abstracted, abstract-ed, mournful. "Excuse " Aunt Jane began, and then, seeing that Mrs Merriwid was alone, "Oh, he's gone, has he?" Mrs. Merriwid started violently and pressed her hand to her heaving bosom. "Who speaks?" she cried, in a tragic voice. "Could It have been ? Ah! No, no! Oh, It's you, is if, aunt-ums? aunt-ums? Yes, he is gone gone forever. Alas! that I should say so. He has left his Melissa to tears and solitude. Now what avails the splendor of the moon, and what the glory of the starlit star-lit skies!" "Are you crazy?" ejaculated Aunt Jane. "I suppose some people might think I was," replied her niece, in her ordinary ordi-nary matter-of-fact tones. "I've Just missed a chance to get my picture in the papers and be described as a 'fascinating 'fas-cinating and wealthy widow." Mr. Buskins, at the same time, escaped being forced into the fierce, white light that beats about the shrinking wid. "Someiimes they marry several, and sometimes several marry the same creature, not all at the sam time, of course." "Are you going to tell me what h said?" inquired Aunt' Jane, Bomewhat impatiently. "Every word, dearie," replied Mrs. Merriwid. "You must give me time. I know you haven't any sympathy for him, though, and that makes it a little lit-tle hard. If you could have seen "the spasm of anguish that passed over his pallid face when he saw that his fond hope was dashed how sternly he repressed re-pressed the emotion that shook his manly form and bowed to the inevitable! inevit-able! You know there is something well, it's better not to dwell upon it. As you say, these actors know just exactly how to produce their effects, and then, they tell me that they are terribly dissipated." "Of course they are," said Aunt Jane. "Well, what " "It's remarkable, though, how they manage to find time to dissipate," mused Mrs. Merriwid. "What with studying their parts and rehearsing and pasting their press notices in their scrap-books and performing and traveling around and eating and sleeping, sleep-ing, you would think they had about enough to occupy them seriously, wouldn't you?" "Are you going to tell me what ti said, or are you not?" Aunt Jane repeated re-peated the question quite irritably. "Oh, yes," said Mrs. Merriwid. "1 ''' v -. - -"-' " ' "How Would You Like to Marry Me?" Thespian. I've saved him from that tt least" "You mean that he proposed and you refused him?" asked Aunt Jane. "I mean that he laid his loyal heart at my lily feet and that I coldly spurned spurn-ed his proffered love," corrected Mrs. Merriwid. "In other words, I laughed him to scorn and said him nay, cruel that I was! Hist! are we alone? All ri,-5ht, then, honeysuckle. Bring a pil- low over here and sit down and I'll tell you all about It." "Weil," said Aunt Jane, as she complied com-plied with the request, , "I'm glad you didn't accept him. I may be old-fashioned, but I must say that from all I hear about actors and actresses, it would have been a very unfortunate thing, to say the least." "You interest me strangely," declared de-clared Mrs. Merriwid. "What have you heard? Never mind, though, dearie. dear-ie. Perhaps it will be better to say nothing that would bring the blush of shame to my innocent cheek. But. auntie, if you'd only seen the moonlight moon-light falling in a mellow flood upon his pleading face! If you could have heard the rich, musical tones of his exquisitely modulated voice as he plighted bis vows!" . "Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed Aunt Jane. ' -t's the man's business, that sort of thing." "True," Mrs. Merriwid murmured. "I've seen him making love to women that I know he detested kissing their fingertips with that splendidly chival-ric chival-ric air and sinking gracefully on one knee before them; also clasping them In a passionate embrace. Perhaps if he had clasped But no matter. And you needn't look so shocked, because he didn't. Yes, he certainly knows how to do it. He has had lots of practice." prac-tice." "Of course he has," said Aunt Jat e. "How any woman can bring herself to marry one of the creatures is beyoud tne." "But they do," observed Mrs. Merri- was forgetting. Well, dearie, we were talking about hay fever, and he broke off suddenly and looked at his watch. 'It's about time I was hitting the feathers,' he observed. 'By the way, Melissa ' " 'Sir!' says I. " 'How would you like to marry me?' says he. " 'Not at all,' says I. " 'Then there's no use of me sticking around,' says he. " 'Not a bit,' says I. " 'Ya-ha-aww!' says he. 'Gee! But I'm sleepy. Well, good night. lie good.' And he departed." Aunt Jane rose abruptly and flounced flounc-ed into the house. "You're not half as mad as I was, dearie," Mrs. Merriwid called after her. (Copyright, 1912. by W. G. Chapmaji.) |