Show DIN ma aa AL RES FOLLY atil L Y CHAPTER I 1 t of course now that its nil all over and done its easy tobe to be wise and say that it wn all my fault maybe faybe it yas waa but well wel 1 dont see that there was inukih fault about it IL Eyer everybody body seems to be i and though as aa somei body gays says n bout about marriages its ita rather early for congratulations I 1 think everybody Is going to stay satisfied and im mighty sure eure that mr braxton for one have been sat ladled at all if I 1 er butted in A girl must butt in sometimes and tills this was oie on e of the times ill admit too that I 1 acted without due knowle knowledge dge of tile the facts but whose fault was it that I 1 was ignorant of 0 them it carfa certainly mine father could have told mie me some of them und and fred could have told me more and even josephine could have told me bonn thing ng that could have helped they had weeks and weeks in which 1 they could have told me and none of them said a word well then N B D they all claim of course that they thought I 1 was too young and innocent to be told piffle I 1 this tile the century ats its hie file awen treib and women arent as Innocent as they used to be in the days when hec tor ter was a pup 1 after all now that eliot i have argued the thing out but 1 h am M I 1 9 to be llave that the blame jf f blame bhawe there wai for what happened really lies of at i emr mr pauls door this occurred f ito to me before but the more I 1 think of ai it the more evident cit it baco becomes mes why chyl I 1 it was even mr paul who but that comes later anyway ive got to get on with my story glory I 1 great grandpa dinsmore built dins mores folly the fid fact w was i as too notorious to leave any aljan chance e for the family to deny it and now of since everything has turned out so well none of the family wants to deny it of course bourse I 1 have no personal knowledge of the fact that the world ever scoffed at grandpas house bouse the mod ern world tri indeed deed has always been too fo polite to scoff where I 1 could hear dear it but I 1 am convinced that it did no self gelf respecting world could possibly refrain from at that amazing medley of all styles of ell all ages that aggregation of greek temple egic llou colo nade blo moorish elsh entrance feudal castle elizabethan manor bouse boise swiss chalet french chateau not to speak of other units concerning whose ancestry no hect C can an speaks speak without blushing lushing ti all elect lect jumbled ambled together with a beautiful american disregard of Kurop ehn illeta dicta and plastered into a sef whole toy american mortar ovin outrun run hy by gri english glish ivy and yet behold how Is justified of her 1 to day DInst nores folly brings me a fabulous income while other nearby houses douses moro more modern equally large in b better tier repair u und nd apparently to in more desirable go gb begging however thi this s delightful state ot of affairs Is very recent until nester day that Is to say until the day d ay iy I 1 dragged Josep josephine hind forty tive nil minutes from broadway Broadw ny and oil dropped her down into dins aln mores folly I 1 hod had steadily avoided till all mention of the he place und and bad do denenny best leest to conceal from my tr lends friends tile the dreadful die Are adful fact any lineal ancestor of mine tind had perpetrated tr abed such a monstrosity what made it worie worse J so I 1 thought in those early curly days was nas that the place was mine my very ery own grand pa dinsmore had wished it onto me ld in his will and had bad given nie me no cliance chance to discover what he had done to me until it was too late to 0 o stop him moreover he had added a proviso that thai I 1 shob should ld neither sell nor radically titter niter the place until I 1 was twenty one that Is to say not for two years more that thai I 1 should see se that it was always occupied at lest by a care taker and that I 1 should live in it for at least four weeks in every year he also left a note addressed addi essed to me personally so in he requested that I 1 should keep sandy perkins on as gardener or carets caretaker her us as long lone ss s he wanted to stay perlena Per Llna has not been very pleasant to deal with since hir wife i iau an away he wrote but he has hab been a falth faithful ful servant to me for many years and I 1 should not like him film to be turned out moreover he hopes and believes that sonie some day the woman will come back to hm nt at dins dine more and I 1 feel that it would be cruel to destroy this hope by driving him away of course I 1 had find born been to dinsmore often to see sec dear old grand grandeo po who was nice enough to tb wake make me almost forget tile the awful floine bouse in velch he lived and of course I 1 knew perkins us as well its as an anyone ofie could know the sour old body but until I 1 rend read grandpas note cote I 1 had uever known that perkins wife had bad run abuy 0 1 suppose everi everybody bodY considered tin thal I 1 wai too young to be told in fact I 1 scarcely remembered that lio lie had a wife atall at nf all I 1 suppose I 1 had seen tier hut but I 1 could not recall what she 1 looked like I 1 asked father it and he be sold that thai lie he understood that she was 1 much than berkins ond and that the t two wo had not got gotten ien along together at all she had find disappeared three or jour four years before and had near been heard of since so hofts t afterward I 1 tutored jut iut to took look at the place I 1 thought li it would look different I 1 hoped it would now that I 1 owned it of course I 1 saw Perli fris ns too aar lit it course i surveyed hl atti n with wit 1 Ili Inter terest duped by Ms his atory and liy by the net ancl ihal lie ans wn now my lily owls if HP ig u sli bons old codger by crittenden marriott illustrations by iraln myer ayera copyright service swarthy with sun and wrinkled with years who carried his head thru thrust at forward from his lean shoulders as if perpetually watching for something or some soine one new unit I 1 knew about his bla wife 1 ifould could of course coarse understand and an d pity but I 1 felt that I 1 really blame her for or running away id have run away too all the sympathy and pity in the world prevent my feeling creepy as I 1 looked at him if I 1 had known but of course I 1 filant know I 1 plunged at once into inquiries about the place answers were not enthusiastic grandpa be said bad let things un down a good deal and perkins thought that tile the executors woul woula flad find that it would cost a lot of money to set act it to rights I 1 went back home disgusted I 1 did not know kno where the money for repairs was to come from grandpa dinsmore had not bad much money of hla his own fattier father was the moneymaker of the family and had had nothing but tile the place to leave and I 1 certainly had bad no intention of spend e I 1 4 a dad threw down hie napkin and andrut gat U up p confound your artistic naturel nature 1 v ing my allowance in repairs on a monstrosity like dinsmores DIns mores folly I 1 made up my mind to let the year go by without fulfilling ful lIlling the conditions of tile the will 1 I was an awful little fool in some ways in those faraway days two years ago and to let the reversionary ver version flonary ary legatee the society for homeless alley cats or something canini the place but just five weeks before the first year was up dad reminded me ine f hiie lie date and asked nie me when I 1 was going down I 1 stared at him reproachfully taron don d me dad I 1 said but you forgot that I 1 requested you never to mention dinsmores DIns mores folly to me again never mention mendon dad broke off then forged ahead full speed look liere here edithl edith I 1 he demanded what blamed nonsense are you talking if you dont go down there in a week in six els days forfeit the place to tile the society fors for S 1 i precisely dad daal I 1 I 1 interrupted 1 know it Is an inhuman thing to do but its mo me or them and the homeless cats can stand dinsmores Dins mores folly better than I 1 can what wh a t 1 11 I mean to forfeit the place dad 1 I answered hastily 1 I can usually mall age lad but I 1 know when to quit fooling and this was one of ite times you mean to I 1 you mean toi to I 1 are you crazy edith the place will be worth a million dollars when tie the city builds out to idill once more I 1 tried to be flippant willits a million dollars compared to the wrecking of ray my whole artistic naturel na I 1 demanded dad threw down hla his napkin and gut up confound your artistic nature 1 I 11 lie he roared if ever learned linw how hard it Is to make a million mills you talk so idiotically you bud and josephine get ready to go down to dinsmores Dins mores folly tomorrow and ill go with you and see that you go and stay miss stay for the full thirty days but dad I 1 cried despairingly driven to my last defense cut dad the place habitable it needs thousands of dollars worth of repairs dad hesitated who says bays so sot he demanded perkins ns the caretaker oh well 1 ill look into it and make what repairs tire necessary put un der stand roe rue once for all youre going down there whether the place Is in hi rc repair aar or not and youre going to stay and fulfill every jot and title of your grandfathers will and I 1 dont propose to have any nonsense about it elther either dad strode off autly leaving me in much the same state of mind as as a prisoner to whom the judge bus baa lusi said paid thirty dollars or thirty djuba flow however everi there was no use in talking when dad laid down down the law in thal tone I 1 dian didn t waste time I 1 just obeyed anyway lie fie yas was going to pay for tile lie repairs and I 1 that thai was some thing so we went dad and I 1 the house bouse so bad after all and the place was really bearable after we got used to o it it was rather trying it at first to walk through a bit bal loony moorish doorway into a dismal hall which opened into a louis quatorze drawing room hut but after a week I 1 got so that I 1 could do it without a shudder and after two weeks fred turned up and chrit made a difference fred was fred james the only son BOD of tile his mother and she wits was a widow who lived half a mile away from dinsmore fred was twenty one years old and was tas a reporter on the new york star tor for fifty weeks in the year near for the other two weeks be was mothers boy josephine knew mother and met him of at her house bouse and brought him home with tier her and after that lint lie he was mothers boy only at meals the rest of the ime he spent with us except when dad tolled him off and talked politics and nuance finance eitl him dad said once that considering that fred was a college boy and a newspaper man he was unusually intelligent doff dal was always saying sarcastic things thine like that fred had bad helped to pass the time for ten days when the twenty of august dawned apparently there any anything thlu particularly fateful about the dawn dawa except that it was botond tand ho that was scarcely fateful or distinctive for an august day still 1 im sure I 1 did foel feel real that morning later when mr paul called calla to see dada dad I 1 remembered how bow I 1 had felt and said ah ab scat omen in real vassar but du it IL was too late then tile the malls of the gods had begun to grind mr paul was fathers lawyer and father lier put implicit trust in hie judg men ment I 1 so much so that freds news paper I 1 mean of course the news paper that fred te reported ported for hail had once asserted that father never planned to roli rob a widow or an orphan without asking mr pauls advice as to the file best way to do it this was a libei of course but it kasint a patch to some of the things that the papers used to say of father 1 I used to keep a scrapbook of clippings of their remarks and when fattier father behave as I 1 wanted him film to I 1 used to get it out and read them aloud to him till he became duly jumble humble if course father had never clever robbed anybody but he was tile the head of the consolidated trust company and reg every other year when the elections came around he was held up to the intelligent voters cis as an enemy of mankind manlif fid As a matter of fact he was a bully good old scout and a regular pal of course I 1 can understand that lie might be just a little overpowering overpower lug to one alio who know him well and as for mr paul well I 1 butt both josephine and I 1 had always thought that ur mr paul was a fear dear only well of late he be had taken to following roc me round and staring at me in a mushy way you knowl know I 1 and add as much as I 1 I 1 never fancied him in any other capacity than a sort of an an dent clent uncle not that he was really very old I 1 he be just seemed old and when he friel insisted sted on young he be bored me to a frazzle and that was something that taj aty few of the trouser wearing half of creation had ever been able to do I 1 was sitting on the porch waiting wartini tini for fred to come and take me riding when mr paul out walked into fathers den just 4 J r t inside the window at my back a and nd I 1 kept my seat mostly because it occur to we me to move and a little because I 1 was afraid that to 10 move would call mr Paul satten alon to me dad knew I 1 was there anyhow though perhaps he had fit f gotten it and he hd have minded anyway TO BE CONTINUED |