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Show sxhO lilacs K)' the'TJ," S FAR An orphan since "io aso of seven, Charlotte (Cherry) X: hk,n,0WS a'most nthl"e bank, Jl'dK'' ,udson Msh- ken ' " co su'im with Emma Has- Do r'nlh "anECS 'r "Cr ' leav Sa" obtarn h S anii lC,,S hcr lhat El"i las obtained for her a secretarial position win. the wealthy Mrs. Porteous Porter, keener nC SC0' Wh"e Emma ls hou"- tZZ J ,ls 0rst t0 g0 t0 the Ma"- banks mansion. When she arrives she dines alone with the judge as Fran, his young wife, and his niece, Amyare Binlne : out. Kelly coates, an artist, drops In and Cherry feels very 111 at ease in her convent clothes. On their way out, ran and Amy stop and casually nod hen Cherry is Introduced, it ls evident to Cherry that Kelly and Fran are in-terestju in-terestju in each other. As Fran and Amy ltave, she stands on the stairway concealed by palms, and hears laughing reference to her and her clothes. Now continue with the story. CHAPTER IV Mrs. Porter was a . stout, soft, pretty woman of seventy-four. Some Physical difficulty, perhaps not more serious than her weight itself, made it inconvenient for her to ever walk more than a few steps at a time. She took a drive every day, she could get to the bathroom for the comfort of a long, leisurely bath, and every morning she moved to her favorite chair in a sunny bay window or beside an old-fashioned fire. As Dovey Glashell, Mrs. Porter had had an adored,' flirtatious, giddy girlhood. Hers had been 'the generation gen-eration that twined flowers in hair and danced kid slippers to pulp at formal balls. Upon marrying the richest and most eligible young man in a city full of mining and railway, rail-way, banking and land barons' sons, she had flashed upon a stunned group of friends the news of a pro spective European honeymoon trip with her bridegroom. Emma was indispensable; she kept the whole enormous machine running; run-ning; she knew where business papers pa-pers were, and what the lawyer came about, and when to call the doctor. But there was nothing soft, friendly, companionable about Emma, Em-ma, and at the telephone or when it came to special shopping she was grimly inadequate. Also, she was a monotonous and disinterested reader. read-er. Mrs. Porter had a large mail; she had long been unequal to it, and had employed unsatisfactory girls to act as secretary from time to time with wearying results. , Cherry began her duties with the trembling feeling that by no chance could her lines have fallen permanently perma-nently in such pleasant places. To be able to creep away from the world that in one brief encounter had hurt her so terribly and to hide herself here, with a lovely room for her own, a houseful of books for company, amazing meals served at regular or indeed, irregular hours, and only a gentle, sweet, helpless old lady to amuse seemed too good a fortune to be true. From this she passed to a sort of exultation that she had succeeded. She answered the telephone and wrote letters and drove out in the park in her new brown coat and becoming be-coming brown hat, in a pleasant quiver of feeling herself liked and needed and approved. The third phase came only after several weeks, and was one of doubt, boredom and weariness. She wanted exercise and interest and companionship; she wanted a sense of living; instead she was like a girl caught in a dream. Outwardly, it was all easy and delightful. Cherry came into her employer's room not earlier than half past ten o'clock every morning, not later than eleven. Mrs. Porter only lost sight of the girl for brief intervals thereafter until ten o'clock at night. Cherry had immediately discovered her appetite for flattery and had innocently gratified it in their first days together. Now she had to pay the price for this concession con-cession with constant pleasantries. "I like you because you're so frank with me, Cherry," Mrs. Porter Por-ter said to her once. "I told Emma that you were a blunt little thing and she was afraid I didn't like it. But I do! I love people to be absolutely abso-lutely frank with me." With her first sight of Emma, Cherry had had the feeling that the long years since last they had met were as nothing and that she was a little girl of seven again, living in a small tiled house with a patio and a fountain, and running in and out of the bedroom where her mother lay always in bed. A thousand details, de-tails, half forgotten until now, had rushed back to her, and she had longed for the moment when she might talk freely to Emma of the past. .xn- To include any exercise at all in the twenty-four hours she formed the habit of rising early and taking a long walk about the streets or into the eucalyptus-shaded roads of the Presidio before breakfast. In the freshness and sparkle of these winter mornings life seemed exhilarating enough. But after her breakfast the warmth and torpidity of the Porter mansion enveloped her again like a stupefying drug. I wonder," she wrote Anita, "how long this would go on? Emma that's my old nurse, you know-has know-has been in one job or mother like this for years and years. Well, anyway any-way I gt w first pay yeteria7 Md I'm going to buy myself a hat I saw mi PDlk street. My love to W.N.U. RELEASP The girl saw that two bay horses carrying a man and a woman were pacing along one of the bridle paths. everyone, Madeleine especially, and Elizabeth and all the Sisters and girls." One day Cherry had an adventure. adven-ture. It came on a quiet, foggy afternoon when all the world seemed dull and quiet. Cherry was driving with Mrs. Porter when her old companion com-panion said suddenly, "Look there wait a minute stop him!" Automatically obeying these instructions in-structions Cherry seized the speaking speak-ing tube and Merryweather drew up at the right-hand side of the road. Then the girl saw that two bay horses carrying a man and woman were pacing along one of the bridle paths. and that the woman was Fran Marshbanks and the man Kelly Coates. In response to old Mrs. Porter's gesticulations, and her voice at the window she was energetically lowering, low-ering, the riders came close to the car and Fran gave Cherry her second sec-ond careless smile and nod, and Kelly saluted her by touching his cap with his whip. He was presented pre-sented to Mrs. Porter, and as the two women fell into a discussion of the list of patronesses for a series of concerts, he rode around the back of the car and chatted with Cherry at her own opened window. "Well, Miss I have to call you Cherry, I've forgotten the other name " he began. "Oh, do!" said Cherry, the dull park breaking into sparkles, the white winter sky turned June. "Cherry then. What have you done to yourself? You look like another an-other woman!" "It's my hat," said Cherry. The Polk street creation was on her head, a picturesque hat that came far down over the streaked gold and brown of her hair. "It's more than your hat," Kelly assured her. "You've washed your face, too." Her laugh rang out; he had not heard her laugh before, and as it had impressed Judson Marshbanks at the convent a month or so earlier, ear-lier, it impressed the younger man now as being extraordinarily fresh and pleasant. He looked at her a long time, thoughtfully. Or at least, if only for a few seconds, it seemed a long time to Cherry. She felt the warm color in her cheeks and the slow beat of her heart. "I suppose that's true," Kelly said at last in a surprised tone. "I'd read about girls making their debuts," Cherry pursued, warmed to the very soul by his attentive, half-sympathetic and half-amused look, "and orchids and all that. But somehow, just that night, to see her so safe and so happy and having such a wonderful time when I was homesick and tired and I knew I looked so awful ..." "Well, of course," he agreed quickly, as she paused in a sort of shame and embarrassment. "Amy, you mean?" "Amy." "She's not having such a wonderful wonder-ful time," he said. "It's all comparative. com-parative. She thinks other girls are having a slightly better time, and that drives her wild. Mrs. Marshbanks, Marsh-banks, Fran, was speaking of it just a few minutes ago, and saying what fools girls are!" "Oh, girls are fools all right," Cherry agreed meekly, and as the man laughed she laughed too. "Mr. Coates," old Mrs. Porter said, breaking into the conversation and leaning across Cherry to catch his attention. "Frances has promised to bring Amy to dine with me two weeks from Thursday, and I want you to come too." "I'm a dead loss at dinners," Kelly Kel-ly said, laughing. "You'll never ask me again." "Well, we'D see about that," said the old lady, in high feather. "But you come, now! My nephew George's daughter, Dorothy Page-Smith, Page-Smith, is going to be here comin' up with her mother from Santa Barbara, Bar-bara, where they tell me she's been breakin' all hearts, and I want her to meet Amy and some of the other youngsters." "Jud may not be here; he gets back from Portland tonight," Fran said, "but he may have to go right back again. So Mr. Coates will squire me. I'll guarantee him." "And you tell Mrs. Dickson to get Mary Trainor and Lizzie Block on that committee!" Mrs. Porter adjured her vigorously. "I will. I've not been going to the meetings, more shame to me," said Fran, "but I'm going tomorrow tomor-row and I'll do what I can." "And you tell 'em Cherry'll send them my check for two hundred." "I'll tell them." Fran did not say anything about the generous size of the donation. And Cherry fancied that her employer looked just a little lit-tle dashed and disappointed as the riders cantered away on the bridle path again. "We none of us understood," Mrs. Porter said then, in her sweet, wistful wist-ful Uflico "Tuh.r Tiicn Ttf i -..U K o 1-r. married Frances Unger she's a very brilliant girl, but I don't think she's pretty, and she's twenty-two years younger than he is. Seems so strange!" This was as near as Cherry ever had heard her come to criticism or unkindness, and she smiled at her interrogatively. "That doesn't sound like you, Mrs. Porter," she said, with the simple daring that she knew well the old woman liked. "You always say such nice things about everyone." "Well, I hope I always do, my dear, but somehow that girl always does seem to me outlandish. And I loved his first wife, Mary Lee Carey. She died oh, ten years ago. Her mother was Sophy Laquelle, French family here lovely people." Mrs. Porter's proposed dinner party for a chosen dozen of the debutantes took on an increasing importance as the days went by, and, by the debutantes' mothers and families, was by degrees developed into a much larger affair. It was a long time perhaps twenty or twenty-five years since entertaining entertain-ing on a large scale had taken place in the old Glashell .mansion, and the newspapers made much of it, and many were the friendly offers of assistance to Cherry's employer as the plan got daily under way. The original twelve girls swelled to a score, to thirty, for there were many who must not be forgotten, and at least forty eligible young men were asked to join them. Then certain favored and intimate elders were included to save the hostess the least effort, and in no time at all caterers had come in to set tables ta-bles and decorate them and prepare a sumptuous meal for one hundred guests; florists arrived with palms and ropes of chrysanthemums; newspaper men and photographers gave the house no rest; a five piece orchestra was engaged, and Mrs. Porter remained in bed all day, getting herself completely rested and ready. To Cherry's eagerness and inexperience inex-perience and hunger for excitement all this was satisfying beyond words. She was everywhere; she helped with everything. In the midst of the flurry the guest of honor, Dorothy Page-Smith, arrived with a formidable mother as escort, and took possession of one of the big rooms on the second floor. This alone would have supplied sup-plied Cherry with pleasurable interest, in-terest, for Dorothy was a harmless, indeed a seemingly half-witted little lit-tle creature who turned to Cherry at once as being the only other person per-son of anything like her age in the house, and in a babyish lisp consulted con-sulted her about her gowns, her hair arrangement, her beaux and the possibility of her having anything any-thing but a "wolten" time in a place where she just didn't know one "thingle thole." The day of the party was overcast with a cold rain spattering down. At seven o'clock, trim and demure de-mure in her blue dress with the silver buttons, Cherry went into Mrs. Porter's bedroom to find Emma Em-ma and Ferny busily getting the old lady into a magnificent robe of silver sil-ver - and - blue brocade, decorating the beautiful curls of her rich white hair with diamond butterflies and preparing her with a preliminary cup of tea and chicken sandwich for the evening's frivolities. She had at first planned to go downstairs tonight, to be installed majestically in some great chair, to welcome her guests herself. But this seemed at the last moment too great an effort (TO BE CONTINUED) |