Short Romantic Love Stories

• A girl asked a boy if she was pretty, he said "No". She asked him if he wanted to be with her forever, he said "No". Then she asked him if he would cry if she walked away, he said "No". She had heard enough; she needed to leave.As she walked away he grabbed her arm and told her to stay. He said "You're not pretty, you're beautiful. I don`t want to be with you forever, I need to be with you forever. And I wouldn't cry if you walked away, I would die."

• A man bought 12 flowers. 11 real and 1 fake. He said, "I will love you until the last flower dies."

• One night a guy and a girl were driving home from the movies. The boy sensed there was something wrong because of the painful silence they shared between them that night. The girl then asked the boy to pull over because she wanted to talk. She told him that her feelings had changed & that it was time to move on.A silent tear slid down his cheek as he slowly reached into his pocket & passed her a folded note.At that moment, a drunk driver was speeding down that very same street. He swerved right into the drivers seat, killing the boy. Miraculously, the girl survived. Remembering the note, she pulled it out & read it. "Without your love, I would die."

• There was a girl named Becca and a boy named Joe. Becca was in a burning house. None of the firefighters could get in the house because the fire was too big. Joe dressed in one of the fire suits and got into the house. When he got up the stairs, the steps fell off behind him. When he got into her room he sealed the door up behind him. He held her tight, kissed her, huged her, then said that he loved her. She asked what was wrong, and he said that he was going to die. Her eyes widened as she began to cry. He picked her up and jumped out of the four story house. He landed on his back with her on top of him. He died to save her life.

• There was girl who loved a boy so much she said to the boy, "If I told you that I liked you, would you take it as a joke?"The boy said, "Yes I would."She asked, "Why?"The boy replied, "Because I know you don't like me, I know you love me!"

• Love Means... (a girl and guy were speeding over 100 mph on a motorcycle)Girl: Slow down. I'm scared.

Guy: No this is fun.
Girl: No its not. Please, it's too scary!

Guy: Then tell me you love me.

Girl: Fine, I love you. Slow down! Guy: Now give me a big hug. (Girl hugs him)

Guy: Can you take my helmet off and put it on? It's bugging me.

In the paper the next day: A motorcycle had crashed into a building because of break failure. Two people were on the motorcycle, but only one survived. The truth was that halfway down the road, the guy realized that his breaks broke, but he didn't want to let the girl know. Instead, he had her say she loved him, felt her hug one last time, then had her wear his helmet so she would live even though it meant he would die.

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Tips for Eating Healthy in College

Maintaining healthy eating habits in college can sometimes be harder than trying to pass a quantum physics exam. College cafeterias, late-night snackathons, and packed schedules that leave little time for exercising often lead not only to "freshman 15" weight gain, but to an unhealthy lifestyle that continues even after graduation.

So how can you avoid some of the dietary pitfalls common to your college campus?  We spoke with two Certified Diabetes Educators, Lara Rondinelli, RD, LDN, CDE, and Jolene Sutter, MS, RD, CDN, as well as some current and former college students who gave their thoughts and suggestions on how to incorporate some healthy eating habits into your routine.

1. Sneaky Snacks. Companies like Nabisco are getting hip to the health food craze and have created a great line of snack packs that contain only 100 calories. Not only are these snacks healthier than their high caloric, hydrogenated oil-infused counterparts, but snack packs are also clearly labeled with carbohydrate information needed to correctly bolus. Jenny, a 19-year-old sophomore from San Diego, likes to bring these 100 calorie snack packs or Nature Valley granola bars with her to school. "There are pretzels, Sun Chips, crackers - basically everything in nice little packages, which are perfect for bringing to school," she says.
   
   Eating fruits and veggies are also a perfect snack time option. "An apple a day," Ashley, a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania, suggests. "Cliché as it might be, I went to a health food store and bought Pacific Rose and Fuji apples by the bagful. I'd have at least one a day."
2. Don't "Do Lunch" Every Day. It's a typical social activity to meet friends for lunch, dinner, coffee, or dessert. Not only can this expand your waistline from the heavy portions most restaurants give out these days, but you might also see the size of your wallet start to shrink. Want to switch that around? Don't make 'meeting for lunch' a regular social activity, but find other ways to socialize. Jenny suggests, "Instead, you can meet friends during breaks to go jogging on the track at school."
3. Food Fuel. Bleary-eyed students up late studying for exams are a common sight on college campuses. But Lara Rondinelli, a diabetes educator at Rush University, warns, "Large quantities of caffeine are not good for anyone and even if these drinks are fortified with some vitamins this does not classify them as a health food." She says college students who skip meals in favor of energy drinks and pots of coffee need to focus on fueling with lean meats, vegetables, fresh fruit, and milk or light yogurt.
   
   Jolene Sloat, a diabetes educator at Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University, adds that protein bars and meal replacements can be good alternatives occasionally, and that these bars usually are labeled with the important nutrition information. But, she says, "These foods are not ideal for daily consumption because they may be lacking in some of the nutrients that you would get from a balanced meal."
4. Be the "Designated Driver." Eating late at night while studying or partying is a major temptation, but you should do your best to consume all or most of your calories before 7:00 pm. Sara, a 27-year-old who now works at a college in south Florida, shares her experiences when she was a student. "One thing that helped me with healthy eating in college was remembering that just because everyone else is eating does not mean that I needed to," she says. "My college had a great mom and pop doughnut shop nearby and students (especially my friends) enjoyed many late night runs. I could be the 'designated driver' and go along for the ride, be there for the jokes and the stories but not have to deal with the blood sugar swings of a jelly doughnut." Sara says it's all about staying balanced, choosing specific times to indulge in your favorites. Don't deprive yourself, or you're likely to binge later, so keep your treats--whatever they may be--in moderation.
5. Find a Routine That Works. The first week or two of college is often overwhelming and chaotic, but once you get used to your class schedule, it's important to figure out convenient times when you are free to eat meals. They will most likely vary from day to day, but creating a routine for each day will help you avoid the eat-and-run.
   
   "The first week is rough, but then you know, I eat at these times on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and these times on Tuesday and Thursday, and you plan accordingly," says Allison, a 23-year-old living in D.C. who graduated last year. "I've found that I have a harder time keeping my sugars in check when I am at home, where my routine is gone, than when I'm at school."
6. Get an "A" in Fitness. An article about eating healthy wouldn't be complete without nutrition's partner-in-crime: exercise. Colleges often offer physical education classes, which make it easier to stay fit. Jenny says, "I take a PE class every semester (for fun) and so taking this class gives me exercise and a chance to meet friends who are into sports like myself. My school offers classic sports like soccer and volleyball as well as more outdoorsy sports such as surfing, kayaking, and sailing. So there's something for everyone."
7. Channel Your Inner Julia Child. Whether you are still living in the dorms or are living on your own in your first apartment, visiting a local grocery store is a much cheaper and healthier option than eating out for all your meals.
   
   Your shopping list should include these healthy suggestions: fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads, lean meats, eggs, frozen and canned vegetables, store brand whole-grain cereals (Lara suggests aiming for greater than 3 grams of fiber per serving), and low-fat dairy products. Cheaper options are often the store-brand versions of your favorite cereals and flavors of yogurt. Jolene recommends stocking up on canned foods, like beans, soups, and vegetables.
   
   "I would buy the frozen Perdue chicken tenderloins (not the breaded ones) and cook those with some garlic (they were a staple!) and then add them to salads [or] stir frys or Asian noodles," Allison suggests. Ashley adds, "I bought a 5-pound sack of basmati rice in the beginning of the year and it looks like it will last me until the end. Basmati rice is lower in carbs than white or brown rice."
8. Get Creative. Ramen noodles are a staple among college students, so Jolene has a few suggestions:
   -- Drain out some of the liquid portion since it may have half a day's worth of sodium
   -- Add 1-2 cups of frozen vegetables before heating up the ramen noodles to get extra fiber, vitamins and minerals
   -- Add 2-3 ounces of lean chicken, beans, or tofu for added protein and fiber
   -- Reduce the portion size of the ramen noodles when adding in other foods to cut down on the calories, saturated fat, and sodium content
9. Stay Balanced. Even when you are out with friends at the mall, you can stay balanced with your choices at fast food restaurants.
   
   "Most places like McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's offer a grilled chicken sandwich," Lara says. "I'd recommend ordering it without mayo and substitute mustard in place of it." Other options include a green salad with grilled chicken and low-fat dressing or fresh fruit like sliced applies. Even a hamburger is better than sauce-heavy Big Macs or Quarter Pounders.
10. When in doubt, ask. Creating a personalized nutrition and fitness plan can take time and work, so if you have questions, your endocrinologist should be able to recommend a nutritionist you can speak to. Your doctor or your university health center probably has a nutritionist on staff, so make an appointment if you run into stumbling blocks, or if you're seeing your blood sugar average or your weight starting to climb.
    
    Another great place to ask questions is your local dining hall. Sara recently had a conversation with the head of dining services. "She said that there is nothing that they serve that she cannot tell me the exact carb count of," she says. "We just have to ask."

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Haircut #Ring Lardner

I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain't no New York: City and besides that, the most of the boys works all day and don't have no leisure to drop in here and get themselves prettied up.

You're a newcomer, ain't you? I thought I hadn't seen you round before. I hope you like it good enough to stay. As I say, we ain't no New York City or Chicago, but we have pretty good times. Not as good, though, since Jim Kendall got killed. When he was alive, him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more laughin' done here than any town its size in America.

Jim was comical, and Hod was pretty near a match for him. Since Jim's gone, Hod tries to hold his end up just the same as ever, but it's tough goin' when you ain't got nobody to kind of work with.

They used to be plenty fun in here Saturdays. This place is jampacked Saturdays, from four o'clock on. Jim and Hod would show up right after their supper round six o'clock. Jim would set himself down in that big chair, nearest the blue spittoon. Whoever had been settin' in that chair, why they'd get up when Jim come in and at" it to him.

You'd of thought it was a reserved seat like they have sometimes in a theaytre. Hod would generally always stand or walk up and down or some Saturdays, of course, he'd be settin' in this chair part of the time, gettin' a haircut.

Well, Jim would set there a w'ile without opening his mouth only to spit, and then finally he'd say to me, "Whitey,"--my right name, that is, my right first name, is Dick, but everybody round here calls me Whitey--Jim would say, "Whitey, your nose looks like a rosebud tonight. You must of been drinkin' some of your aw de cologne."

So I'd say, "No, Jim, but you look like you'd been drinkin' something of that kind or somethin' worse."

Jim would have to laugh at that, but then he'd speak up and say, "No, I ain't had nothin' to drink, but that ain't sayin' I wouldn't like somethin'. I wouldn't even mind if it was wood alcohol."

Then Hod Meyers would say, "Neither would your wife." That would set everybody to laughin' because Jim and his wife wasn't on very good terms. She'd of divorced him only they wasn't no chance to get alimony and she didn't have no way to take care of herself and the kids. She couldn't never understand Jim. He was kind of rough, but a good fella at heart.

Him and Hod had all kinds of sport with Milt Sheppard. I don't suppose you've seen Milt. Well, he's got an Adam's apple that looks more like a mush-melon. So I'd be shavin' Milt and when I'd start to shave down here on his neck, Hod would holler, "Hey, Whitey, wait a minute! Before you cut into it, let's make up a pool and see who can guess closest to the number of seeds."

And Jim would say, "If Milt hadn't of been so hoggish, he'd of ordered a half a cantaloupe instead of a whole one and it might not of stuck in his throat."

All the boys would roar at this and Milt himself would force a smile, though the joke was on him. Jim certainly was a card!

There's his shavin' mug, setting on the shelf, right next to Charley Vail's. "Charles M. Vail." That's the druggist. He comes in regular for his shave, three times a week. And Jim's is the cup next to Charley's. "dames H. Kendall." Jim won't need no shavin' mug no more, but I'll leave it there just the same for old time's sake. Jim certainly was a character!

Years ago, Jim used to travel for a canned goods concern over in Carterville. They sold canned goods. Jim had the whole northern half of the State and was on the road five days out of every week. He'd drop in here Saturdays and tell his experiences for that week. It was rich.

I guess he paid more attention to playin' jokes than makin' sales. Finally the concern let him out and he come right home here and told everybody he'd been fired instead of sayin' he'd resigned like most fellas would of.

It was a Saturday and the shop was full and Jim got up out of that chair and says, "Gentlemen, I got an important announcement to make. I been fired from my job."

Well, they asked him if he was in earnest and he said he was and nobody could think of nothin' to say till Jim finally broke the ice himself. He says, "I been sellin' canned goods and now I'm canned goods myself.

You see, the concern he'd been workin' for was a factory that made canned goods. Over in Carterville. And now Jim said he was canned himself. He was certainly a card!

Jim had a great trick that he used to play w'ile he was travelin'. For instance, he'd be ridin' on a train and they'd come to some little town like, well, like, well, like, we'll say, like Benton. Jim would look out the train window and read the signs of the stores.

For instance, they'd be a sign, "Henry Smith, Dry Goods." Well, Jim would write down the name and the name of the town and when he got to wherever he was goin' he'd mail back a postal card to Henry Smith at Benton and not sign no name to it, but he'd write on the card, well somethin' like "Ask your wife about that book agent that spent the afternoon last week," or "Ask your Missus who kept her from gettin' lonesome the last time you was in Carterville." And he'd sign the card, "A Friend."

Of course, he never knew what really come of none of these jokes, but he could picture what probably happened and that was enough.

Jim didn't work very steady after he lost his position with the Carterville people. What he did earn, coin' odd jobs round town why he spent pretty near all of it on gin, and his family might of starved if the stores hadn't of carried them along. Jim's wife tried her hand at dressmakin', but they ain't nobody goin' to get rich makin' dresses in this town.

As I say, she'd of divorced Jim, only she seen that she couldn't support herself and the kids and she was always hopin' that some day Jim would cut out his habits and give her more than two or three dollars a week.

They was a time when she would go to whoever he was workin' for and ask them to give her his wages, but after she done this once or twice, he beat her to it by borrowin' most of his pay in advance. He told it all round town, how he had outfoxed his Missus. He certainly was a caution!

But he wasn't satisfied with just outwittin' her. He was sore the way she had acted, tryin' to grab off his pay. And he made up his mind he'd get even. Well, he waited till Evans's Circus was advertised to come to town. Then he told his wife and two kiddies that he was goin' to take them to the circus. The day of the circus, he told them he would get the tickets and meet them outside the entrance to the tent.

Well, he didn't have no intentions of bein' there or buyin' tickets or nothin'. He got full of gin and laid round Wright's poolroom all day. His wife and the kids waited and waited and of course he didn't show up. His wife didn't have a dime with her, or nowhere else, I guess. So she finally had to tell the kids it was all off and they cried like they wasn't never goin' to stop.

Well, it seems, w'ile they was cryin', Doc Stair come along and he asked what was the matter, but Mrs. Kendall was stubborn and wouldn't tell him, but the kids told him and he insisted on takin' them and their mother in the show. Jim found this out afterwards and it was one reason why he had it in for Doc Stair.

Doc Stair come here about a year and a half ago. He's a mighty handsome young fella and his clothes always look like he has them made to order. He goes to Detroit two or three times a year and w'ile he's there must have a tailor take his measure and then make him a suit to order. They cost pretty near twice as much, but they fit a whole lot better than if you just bought them in a store.

For a w'ile everybody was wonderin' why a young doctor like Doc Stair should come to a town like this where we already got old Doc Gamble and Doc Foote that's both been here for years and all the practice in town was always divided between the two of them.

Then they was a story got round that Doc Stair's gal had thronged him over, a gal up in the Northern Peninsula somewhere, and the reason he come here was to hide himself away and forget it. He said himself that he thought they wasn't nothin' like general practice in a place like ours to fit a man to be a good all round doctor. And that's why he'd came.

Anyways, it wasn't long before he was makin' enough to live on, though they tell me that he never dunned nobody for what they owed him, and the folks here certainly has got the owin' habit, even in my business. If I had all that was comin' to me for just shaves alone, I could go to Carterville and put up at the Mercer for a week and see a different picture every night. For instance, they's old George Purdy--but I guess I shouldn't ought to be gossipin'.

Well, last year, our coroner died, died of the flu. Ken Beatty, that was his name. He was the coroner. So they had to choose another man to be coroner in his place and they picked Doc Stair. He laughed at first and said he didn't want it, but they made him take it. It ain't no job that anybody would fight for and what a man makes out of it in a year would just about buy seeds for their garden. Doc's the kind, though, that can't say no to nothin' if you keep at him long enough.

But I was goin' to tell you about a poor boy we got here in town-Paul Dickson. He fell out of a tree when he was about ten years old. Lit on his head and it done somethin' to him and he ain't never been right. No harm in him, but just silly. Jim Kendall used to call him cuckoo; that's a name Jim had for anybody that was off their head, only he called people's head their bean. That was another of his gags, callin' head bean and callin' crazy people cuckoo. Only poor Paul ain't crazy, but just silly.

You can imagine that Jim used to have all kinds of fun with Paul. He'd send him to the White Front Garage for a left-handed monkey wrench. Of course they ain't no such thing as a left-handed monkey wrench.

And once we had a kind of a fair here and they was a baseball game between the fats and the leans and before the game started Jim called Paul over and sent him way down to Schrader's hardware store to get a key for the pitcher's box.

They wasn't nothin' in the way of gags that Jim couldn't think up, when he put his mind to it.

Poor Paul was always kind of suspicious of people, maybe on account of how Jim had kept foolin' him. Paul wouldn't have much to do with anybody only his own mother and Doc Stair and a girl here in town named Julie Gregg. That is, she ain't a girl no more, but pretty near thirty or over.

When Doc first come to town, Paul seemed to feel like here was a real friend and he hung round Doc's office most of the w'ile; the only time he wasn't there was when he'd go home to eat or sleep or when he seen Julie Gregg coin' her shoppin'.

When he looked out Doc's window and seen her, he'd run downstairs and join her and tag along with her to the different stores. The poor boy was crazy about Julie and she always treated him mighty nice and made him feel like he was welcome, though of course it wasn't nothin' but pity on her side.

Doc done all he could to improve Paul's mind and he told me once that he really thought the boy was getting better, that they was times when he was as bright and sensible as anybody else.

But I was goin' to tell you about Julie Gregg. Old man Gregg was in the lumber business, but got to drinkin' and lost the most of his money and when he died, he didn't leave nothin' but the house and just enough insurance for the girl to skimp along on.

Her mother was a kind of a half invalid and didn't hardly ever leave the house. Julie wanted to sell the place and move somewhere else after the old man died, but the mother said she was born here and would die here. It was tough on Julie as the young people round this town--well, she's too good for them.

She'd been away to school and Chicago and New York and different places and they ain't no subject she can't talk on, where you take the rest of the young folks here and you mention anything to them outside of Gloria Swanson or Tommy Meighan and they think you're delirious. Did you see Gloria in Wages of Virtue? You missed somethin'!

Well, Doc Stair hadn't been here more than a week when he came in one day to get shaved and I recognized who he was, as he had been pointed out to me, so I told him about my old lady. She's been ailin' for a couple years and either Doc Gamble or Doc Foote, neither one, seemed to be helpin' her. So he said he would come out and see her, but if she was able to get out herself, it would be better to bring her to his office where he could make a completer examination.

So I took her to his office and w'ile I was waitin' for her in the reception room, in come Julie Gregg. When somebody comes in Doc Stair's office, they's a bell that rings in his inside office so he can tell they's somebody to see him.

So he left my old lady inside and come out to the front office and that's the first time him and Julie met and I guess it was what they call love at first sight. But it wasn't fifty-fifty. This young fella was the slickest lookin' fella she'd ever seen in this town and she went wild over him. To him she was just a young lady that wanted to see the doctor.

She'd came on about the same business I had. Her mother had been doctorin' for years with Doc Gamble and Doc Foote and with" out no results. So she'd heard they was a new doc in town and decided to give him a try. He promised to call and see her mother that same day.

I said a minute ago that it was love at first sight on her part. I'm not only judgin' by how she acted afterwards but how she looked at him that first day in his office. I ain't no mind reader, but it was wrote all over her face that she was gone.

Now Jim Kendall, besides bein' a jokesmith and a pretty good drinker, well Jim was quite a lady-killer. I guess he run pretty wild durin' the time he was on the road for them Carterville people, and besides that, he'd had a couple little affairs of the heart right here in town. As I say, his wife would have divorced him, only she couldn't.

But Jim was like the majority of men, and women, too, I guess. He wanted what he couldn't get. He wanted Julie Gregg and worked his head off tryin' to land her. Only he'd of said bean instead of head.

Well, Jim's habits and his jokes didn't appeal to Julie and of course he was a married man, so he didn't have no more chance than, well, than a rabbit. That's an expression of Jim's himself. When somebody didn't have no chance to get elected or somethin', Jim would always say they didn't have no more chance than a rabbit.

He didn't make no bones about how he felt. Right in here, more than once, in front of the whole crowd, he said he was stuck on Julie and anybody that could get her for him was welcome to his house and his wife and kids included. But she wouldn't have nothin' to do with him; wouldn't even speak to him on the street. He finally seen he wasn't gettin' nowheres with his usual line so he decided to try the rough stuff. He went right up to her house one evenin' and when she opened the door he forced his way in and grabbed her. But she broke loose and before he could stop her, she run in the next room and locked the door and phoned to Joe Barnes. Joe's the marshal. Jim could hear who she was phonin' to and he beat it before Joe got there.

Joe was an old friend of Julie's pa. Joe went to Jim the next day and told him what would happen if he ever done it again.

I don't know how the news of this little affair leaked out. Chances is that Joe Barnes told his wife and she told somebody else's wife and they told their husband. Anyways, it did leak out and Hod Meyers had the nerve to kid Jim about it, right here in this shop. Jim didn't deny nothin' and kind of laughed it off and said for us all to wait; that lots of people had tried to make a monkey out of him, but he always got even.

Meanw'ile everybody in town was wise to Julie's bein' wild mad over the Doc. I don't suppose she had any idea how her face changed when him and her was together; of course she couldn't of, or she'd of kept away from him. And she didn't know that we was all noticin' how many times she made excuses to go up to his office or pass it on the other side of the street and look up in his window to see if he was there. I felt sorry for her and so did most other people.

Hod Meyers kept rubbin' it into Jim about how the Doc had cut him out. Jim didn't pay no attention to the kiddie' and you could see he was plannin' one of his jokes.

One trick Jim had was the knack of changin' his voice. He could make you think he was a girl talkie' and he could mimic any man's voice. To show you how good he was along this line, I'll tell you the joke he played on me once.

You know, in most towns of any size, when a man is dead and needs a shave, why the barber that shaves him soaks him five dollars for the job; that is, he don't soak him, but whoever ordered the shave. I just charge three dollars because personally I don't mind much shavin' a dead person. They lay a whole lot stiller than live customers. The only thing is that you don't feel like talkie' to them and you get kind of lonesome.

Well, about the coldest day we ever had here, two years ago last winter, the phone rung at the house w'ile I was home to dinner and I answered the phone and it was a woman's voice and she said she was Mrs. John Scott and her husband was dead and would I come out and shave him.

Old John had always been a good customer of mine. But they live seven miles out in the country, on the Streeter road. Still I didn't see how I could say no.

So I said I would be there, but would have to come in a jitney and it might cost three or four dollars besides the price of the shave. So she, or the voice, it said that was all right, so I got Frank Abbott to drive me out to the place and when I got there, who should open the door but old John himself! He wasn't no more dead than, well, than a rabbit.

It didn't take no private detective to figure out who had played me this little joke. Nobody could of thought it up but Jim Kendall. He certainly was a card!

I tell you this incident just to show you how he could disguise his voice and make you believe it was somebody else talkie'. I'd of swore it was Mrs. Scott had called me. Anyways, some woman.

Well, Jim waited till he had Doc Stair's voice down pat; then he went after revenge.

He called Julie up on a night when he knew Doc was over in Carterville. She never questioned but what it was Doc's voice. Jim said he must see her that night; he couldn't wait no longer to tell her somethin'. She was all excited and told him to come to the house. But he said he was expectin' an important long distance call and wouldn't she please forget her manners for once and come to his office. He said they couldn't nothin' hurt her and nobody would see her and he just must talk to her a little w'ile. Well, poor Julie fell for it.

Doc always keeps a night light in his office, so it looked to Julie like they was somebody there.

Meanw'ile Jim Kendall had went to Wright's poolroom, where they was a whole gang amusin' themselves. The most of them had drank plenty of gin, and they was a rough bunch even when sober. They was always strong for Jim's jokes and when he told them to come with him and see some fun they give up their card games and pool games and followed along.

Doc's office is on the second floor. Right outside his door they's a flight of stairs leadin' to the floor above. Jim and his gang hid in the dark behind these stairs.

Well, tulle come up to Doc's door and rung the bell and they was nothin' coin'. She rung it again and she rung it seven or eight times. Then she tried the door and found it locked. Then Jim made some kind of a noise and she heard it and waited a minute, and then she says, "Is that you, Ralph?" Ralph is Doc's first name.

They was no answer and it must of came to her all of a sudden that she'd been bunked. She pretty near fell downstairs and the whole gang after her. They chased her all the way home, hollerin', "Is that you, Ralph?" and "Oh, Ralphie, dear, is that you?" Jim says he couldn't holler it himself, as he was laughin' too hard.

Poor Julie! She didn't show up here on Main Street for a long, long time afterward.

And of course Jim and his gang told everybody in town, everybody but Doc Stair. They was scared to tell him, and he might of never knowed only for Paul Dickson. The poor cuckoo, as Jim called him, he was here in the shop one night when Jim was still gloatin' yet over what he'd done to Julie. And Paul took in as much of it as he could understand and he run to Doc with the story.

It's a cinch Doc went up in the air and swore he'd make Jim suffer. But it was a kind of a delicate thing, because if it got out that he had beat Jim up, Julie was bound to hear of it and then she'd know that Doc knew and of course knowin' that he knew would make it worse for her than ever. He was goin' to do somethin', but it took a lot of figurin'.

Well, it was a couple days later when Jim was here in the shop again, and so was the cuckoo. Jim was goin' duck-shootin' the next day and had come in lookin' for Hod Meyers to go with him. I happened to know that Hod had went over to Carterville and wouldn't be home till the end of the week. So Jim said he hated to go alone and he guessed he would call it off. Then poor Paul spoke up and said if Jim would take him he would go along. Jim thought a w'ile and then he said, well, he guessed a half-wit was better than nothin'.

I suppose he was plottin' to get Paul out in the boat and play some joke on him, like pushin' him in the water. Anyways, he said Paul could go. He asked him had he ever shot a duck and Paul said no, he'd never even had a gun in his hands. So Jim said he could set in the boat and watch him and if he behaved himself, he might lend him his gun for a couple of shots. They made a date to meet in the mornin' and that's the last I seen of Jim alive.

Next mornin', I hadn't been open more than ten minutes when Doc Stair come in. He looked kind of nervous. He asked me had I seen Paul Dickson. I said no, but I knew where he was, out duckshootin' with Jim Kendall. So Doc says that's what he had heard, and he couldn't understand it because Paul had told him he wouldn't never have no more to do with Jim as long as he lived.

He said Paul had told him about the joke Jim had played on Julie. He said Paul had asked him what he thought of the joke and the Doc told him that anybody that would do a thing like that ought not to be let live. I said it had been a kind of a raw thing, but Jim just couldn't resist no kind of a joke, no matter how raw. I said I thought he was all right at heart, but just bubblin' over with mischief. Doc turned and walked out.

At noon he got a phone call from old John Scott. The lake where Jim and Paul had went shootin' is on John's place. Paul had came runnin' up to the house a few minutes before and said they'd been an accident. Jim had shot a few ducks and then give the gun to Paul and told him to try his luck. Paul hadn't never handled a gun and he was nervous. He was shakin' so hard that he couldn't control the gun. He let fire and Jim sunk back in the boat, dead.

Doc Stair, bein' the coroner, jumped in Frank Abbott's flivver and rushed out to Scott's farm. Paul and old John was down on the shore of the lake. Paul had rowed the boat to shore, but they'd left the body in it, waiting for Doc to come.

Doc examined the body and said they might as well fetch it back to town. They was no use leavin' it there or callin' a jury, as it was a plain case of accidental shootin'.

Personally I wouldn't never leave a person shoot a gun in the same boat I was in unless I was sure they knew somethin' about guns. Jim was a sucker to leave a new beginner have his gun, let alone a half-wit. It probably served Jim right, what he got. But still we miss him round here. He certainly was a card! Comb it wet or dry?

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The Unbolted Door #Mrs Belloc Lowndes

"LEAVE that door alone, young feller; and remember once for all that it's never to be locked or bolted. Not that there's any fear of it's being locked, as the master always has the key on him."
Mrs. Torquil heard the muffled words. Cote, their seventy year-old butler, instructing the new footman in slow, impressive tones, as is the way of butlers when addressing their humble subordinates.
But this subordinate belonged to the new dispensation, so he answered back.
"That's a funny idea - that is."
"It may seem funny to you, seeing you're a stranger, Henry, but 'tis only a sad one to me."
"Sad? Why that, Mr. Cote?"
From where Anne Torquil had stayed her steps at the door of her bedchamber she heard the now quavering, long familiar, old voice, answer - "'Twas this way it happened. Mr. John - and a rare nice young chap he was - was not just put down 'killed' by his Colonel, when he didn't come back from what was then styled 'a raid in the henemy lines.' He was just reported 'missing'. Cruel I called it then, and cruel I calls it now - for 'twas bound to encourage false hopes."
"It must 'a done, Mr. Cote," - the young voice had become grave.
"Mrs. Torquil knew well enough what 'missing' meant. But the master, he just couldn't bring hisself to believe his son - his heir, too, mind you - had gone, so to speak for ever. I mind well how a few days after the Armistice Mr. Torquil came along one night just as I was locking up, and he says, says he, 'Just leave the door of the small hall as it is, Cote. Master John always came into the house that way, because of the short cut from the gate. Many soldiers are coming back now from Germany who was put down as "missing," so my son may walk through that door hany day. That's what he said then, poor gentleman; and that door, Henry, has never been locked or bolted, since."
The men's footsteps died away, and something stirred in Anne Torquil's unhappy atrophied heart. How very strange that she should not have known, till to-night, of her husband's order? It was true that, at all ages past babyhood, the boy had been wont to burst through the outer door of what was called "the small hall" with a cry of "Mother! Where are you? Upstairs?" And yet, dearly as he loved her, close as they were to one another, she had always known that John had cared most for his inarticulate father.
She was so moved, now, that something of the frightful anguish of six years ago came back and restlessly she began to walk up and down the beautiful bedroom many of her friends envied her. How piteous that to her it should be a room of intolerable memories.
In the wide Jacobean bed, where she now spent her often wakeful nights, had been born the son whose coming had seemed inevitable. Convinced that as to this matter she would be as lucky as in all else, she had laughed at the thought that her baby could be a girl. How often, in the last six years, she had wished she had died on the glorious day her boy was born.
Her good friend then, and still her good friend, Dr. Maynard, the old village doctor, had taken it on himself, more than once, during the perfect years which had followed John's birth, to hint that it was a pity the child had no brother, no sister to share his delightful nursery. But she, Anne Torquil, had been wilfully deaf to such advice. Always, during the whole of her happy spoilt young life, she had done what she wanted; and never had she done anything she had not definitely wished to do. She had given her Jack a splendid son, what good old Cote called an heir; that, surely, was quite enough.
Suddenly now, she stopped in her pacing opposite a carved wood mirror. She had been standing just here during her last happy moment of life. It was in the autumn of 1918; her husband was home, convalescing from what had been a severe wound; there were rumours of Peace, and they were confidently expecting their boy home on his first leave. At exactly three o'clock, on a fine early October day, there had come what had been, then, a very familiar knuckle knock on her door. Even when she was a bride of seventeen, and the two were more like a pair of happy children than a married couple, Jack had always knocked before he came into his wife's, Anne's, room.
Blithely she had called out, "Come in!" And he had come in, with a telegram open in his hand.
It was as if she could hear now, to-night, six years later, the sound of his hoarse voice uttering her name - and then, when she had put up her arm with an instinctive violent movement to ward off the blow, the further words, "Thank God nor killed, my darling! Only missing."
Only missing? And John's father had gone on not only hoping against hope, but firmly convinced that, from the depths of some German prison, or even from some German mental home, the boy would come back.

She, from the first, in dry-eyed despair, had felt no hope at all. And her husband's obstinate - what to herself she more than once harshly called his idiotic - optimism, had pained, exasperated, sometimes maddened, her.
She stared now, as if hypnotized, at her own reflection in the dark glass of the mirror. Though she would be forty-five on her next birthday, it was true, as tiresome people so often told her, that she still, at times, looked like a girl. Time had scarcely touched her lovely face and slender rounded figure with his rude finger; but Jack Torquil, not yet fifty, might have been ten years older than his age. For the first time in her life, to-night, Anne asked herself, with a touch of unease, if her husband was as unhappy as she was herself.
This evening she had watched him sitting hunched up in an easy chair, a book in his hand, on the other side of the fire. Suddenly he had taken up a pencil - it was a thing Jack Torquil was given to do, and it always irritated his wife - and marked a passage in the book he was reading. Looking up, he had thrown her a queer, shamed, pleading look; and when he had risen and left the library, to go through his usual ritual of taking a turn out of doors with the three dogs, she had walked across the room to see what it was he had marked in his book. And then she had been at once annoyed, diverted, and, maybe, a little touched; for what her husband had marked had been two lines, the first ridiculously familiar, the second, till this moment, unknown to her.

"It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute."

And now, while slowly undressing, she remembered the two lines Jack had marked. What he, no doubt, still thought of as "a little rift" between them was, in actual fact, a chasm which was ever yawning wider and wider. Yet once, only once, in their now long joint life, had she spoken bitter words to him.
It had been years ago, at a time when he was still full of hope, and she alas! starkly hopeless, as to their son's possible return. The lover in him had awakened, and when his lips had sought hers she had said fiercely, "Never, Jack. Never again" So literally had he accepted her decree, that not once, since then, had he even knocked on the door of the room they had shared so blissfully for twenty-one years.
To-day, this eve of Armistice Day, had been an intolerable day, and Anne told herself that next year they would have people here for the first fortnight of November. They were rich, hospitable both, in their quite different ways, popular. But the real reason why they were never alone, excepting for the Christmas, holidays, and part of November of each year, was that a dual solitude becomes intolerable when shared by a man and woman who were once ardent, exultingly happy, lovers.
As Anne Torquil got into her great bed, the stable clock began to strike twelve, ushering in another Armistice Day; and, as she lay back, smarting, difficult tears rose to her still undimmed eyes.
The thought of her boy was very near to her to-night, so near, indeed, that an overwhelming wish to gaze on his pictured face came over her.
Slipping out of bed, she went over to a painted cabinet where she kept certain sacred, secret things. Among them was her husband's adoring letters, each beginning My darling little love, written during their short engagement; also all her son's photographs from babyhood.
She had had a sketch of him done by Sargent when he was at Sandhurst. That now hung in his father's bedroom. There was no portrait of him in any other part of the house which knew him no more. Some of their later friends did not know they had ever had a child.
Unlocking the drawer in which lay all the photographs of John, she took out the last one, taken of him just after he had received his commission, and wearing his first uniform. While she gazed into the boyish face, he seemed to be smiling proudly, confidently, merrily, up at her.
As she put it back in the drawer, she remembered a clumsy attempt, most kindly meant, of sympathy on the part of their Vicar. He had met her during one of the long lonely walks she had taken that first year of woe, in between her still strenuous war work, for, after the Armistice, Torquilton House had gone on for a long time being a soldiers' convalescent hospital. And, "Who being dead, yet liveth," the Vicar had said in a low voice.
Throwing her head back, she had exclaimed: "You know my husband is still. quite convinced that John was not killed? He thinks he may come back any day."
With a startled look, and making no attempt to answer her, the would-be comforter had gone his way.

To-day, at almost the same place, oddly enough, she had had such an encounter with old Dr. Maynard which had not hurt, so much as angered, her. He had retired in 1919, and she never saw him alone, now. But this time his only son - a son the war had spared - had dropped him from their car, so that he might have a little walk.
The old man had taken her hand in his, and said feelingly, " I should like to think you happy, dear Mrs. Torquil." And, as she had shaken her head - she couldn't pretend to him - he had gone on, with a touch of real admiration in his feeble voice, "You're wonderful! You won't mind my saying so? But how young you keep! Why, this afternoon, you might be twenty-five instead of----"
"Nearly forty-five? Yes, and I do still feel young, worse luck. I'd give a good deal to feel old, Dr. Maynard."
And then he had said a word about her husband which brought the colour rushing up into her face. The doctor had always been chary of his words, but every word had always told. "Can't you bring yourself to be kind to him?" he had said, looking straight into her still lovely face. She had answered at once, and very coldly, " Not in the way you mean."
Shaking his white head sadly he had taken her hand in his again, "You must forgive an old friend - eh? " She had nodded quickly. But she had felt then, and she felt now, that she could not forgive that - yes, impertinent - question.
The twelfth stroke of the clock fell on the still air, and all at once she heard the electric light being turned out in the hall below, followed by the sound of her husband's footsteps coming up the stairs. There came over her an odd, unexpected impulse. Just to go out and bid him good night. But she restrained that impulse. All the same, she walked across to the door, and, turning off the light, noiselessly opened it a little way.
Jack Torquil was making his way up the easy stairs with the steps of an old man, though, as she and Dr. Maynard both knew, he was still young at heart, however deeply grief and hope deferred had scarred his face. And, still feeling moved by what their old manservant had unconsciously revealed, she waited to hear those slow footsteps make their way into the room which was no longer called "Mr. Torquil's dressing-room."
And then it was as if her heart stood still, for the handle of the unbolted door in the hall below turned in the darkness, and there came an upward rush of cold air, followed by her husband's startled shout, "Who goes there!"
There was a moment's pause, and after that pause, as if from infinitely far away, there rang out two words in a voice she had never thought to hear again, even in another life, for Anne Torquil had come not to believe the promise the Vicar had repeated, thinking to comfort her.
And the words uttered in her son's voice pierced her innermost soul, for "Poor father," was all her beloved had come back to say.
Then she heard Jack Torquil's eager, joyful - " John? My dear, dear boy!" and the sound of his feet pounding down the stairs.
As she rushed out to the circular gallery, she heard the handle turn again in the darkness. The lights below were put full on and, looking over the balustrade, she saw her husband standing in the empty hall, staring, with bewildered eyes, at the closed door.
At last he turned, and, looking up, saw her pale face and wide-open eyes gazing down.
"You heard him, too, Anne!"
Straightening herself, she ran round the gallery and so downstairs. There, with what had become a way of forgotten tenderness, she took his hand. " Of course I heard him too!"
The door opened, and he came in with the wind. Having said what was in his dear mind he went back - but where, Jack, where?"

---

Later that night, as Anne lay in his arms, John's father muttered, "He came back for you, my darling; to comfort you. That was quite right."
"For me, Jack? Oh no!"
"But he did, little love. Surely you heard what he said?" And she felt the surprise in his voice. She whispered, " What did he say - to you?"
"Only what you heard - only the two words, Anne, 'Dear mother.'"
He waited a moment, and then he said humbly, for he was a very simple kind of man, " Just to let you know, dearest, and perhaps to let me know, too, that all is well with the child."

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THE FLY #Katherine Mansfield

'Y'ARE VERY SNUG in here,' piped old Mr. Woodifield, and peered out of the great, green-leather armchair by his friend the boss's desk as a baby peers out of its pram. His talk was over; it was time for him to be off. But he did not want to go. Since he had retired, since his ... stroke, the wife and the girls kept him boxed up in the house every day of the week except Tuesday. On Tuesday he was dressed and brushed and allowed to cut back to the City for the day. Though what he did there the wife and girls couldn't imagine. Made a nuisance of himself to his friends, they supposed....Well, perhaps so. All the same, we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves. So there sat old Woodifield, smoking a cigar and staring almost greedily at the boss, who rolled in his office chair, stout, rosy, five years older than he, and still going strong, still at the helm. It did one good to see him.

Wistfully, admiringly, the old voice added, 'It's snug in here, upon my word!'

'Yes, it's comfortable enough,' agreed the boss, and he flipped the Financial Times with a paper-knife. As a matter of fact he was proud of his room; he liked to have it admired, especially by old Woodifield. It gave him a feeling of deep, solid satisfaction to be planted there in the midst of it in full view of that frail old figure in the muffler.

'I've had it done up lately,' he explained, as he had explained for the past - how many! -weeks. 'New carpet,' and he pointed to the bright red carpet with a pattern of large white rings. 'New furniture,' and he nodded towards the massive bookcase and the table with legs like twisted treacle. 'Electric heating!' He waved almost exultantly towards the five transparent, pearly sausages glowing so softly in the tilted copper pan.

But he did not draw old Woodifield's attention to the photograph over the table of a grave-looking boy in uniform standing in one of those spectral photographers' parks with photographers' storm-clouds behind him. It was not new. It had been there for over six years.

'There was something I wanted to tell you,' said old Woodifield, and his eyes grew dim remembering. 'Now what was it? I had it in my mind when I started out this morning.' His hands began to tremble, and patches of red showed above his beard.

Poor old chap, he's on his last pins, thought the boss. And, feeling kindly, he winked at the old man, and said jokingly, 'I tell you what. I've got a little drop of something here that'll do you good before you go out into the cold again. It's beautiful stuff. It wouldn't hurt a child.' He took a key off his watch-chain, unlocked a cupboard below his desk, and drew forth a dark, squat bottle. 'That's the medicine,' said he. ‘And the man from whom I got it told me on the strict Q.T. it came from the cellars at Windsor Castle.'

Old Woodifield's mouth fell open at the sight. He couldn't have looked more surprised if the boss had produced a rabbit. 'It's whisky, ain't it?' he piped feebly.

The boss turned the bottle and lovingly showed him the label. Whisky it was.

'D'you know,' said he, peering up at the boss wonderingly, 'they won't let me touch it at home.' And he looked as though he was going to cry.

'Ah, that's where we know a bit more than the ladies,' cried the boss, swooping across for two tumblers that stood on the table with the water-bottle, and pouring a generous finger into each. 'Drink it down. It'll do you good. And don't put any water with it. It's sacrilege to tamper with stuff like this. Ah!' He tossed off his, pulled out his handkerchief, hastily wiped his moustaches, and cocked an eye at old Woodifield, who was rolling his in his chaps.

The old man swallowed, was silent a moment, and then said faintly, 'It's nutty!'

But it warmed him; it crept into his chill old brain - he remembered.

'That was it,' he said, heaving himself out of his chair. 'I thought you'd like to know. The girls were in Belgium last week having a look at poor Reggie's grave, and they happened to come across your boy's. They're quite near each other, it seems.

Old Woodifield paused, but the boss made no reply. Only a quiver in his eyelids showed that he heard.

'The girls were delighted with the way the place is kept,' piped the old voice. 'Beautifully looked after. Couldn't be better if they were at home. You've not been across, have yer?'

'No, no!' For various reasons the boss had not been across.

'There's miles of it,' quavered old Woodifield, 'and it's all as neat as a garden. Flowers growing on all the graves. Nice broad paths.' It was plain from his voice how much he liked a nice broad path.

The pause came again. Then the old man brightened wonderfully.

'D'you know what the hotel made the girls pay for a pot of jam?' he piped. 'Ten francs! Robbery, I call it. It was a little pot, so Gertrude says, no bigger than a half-crown. And she hadn't taken more than a spoonful when they charged her ten francs. Gertrude brought the pot away with her to teach 'em a lesson. Quite right, too; it's trading on our feelings. They think because we're over there having a look round we're ready to pay anything. That's what it is.' And he turned towards the door.

'Quite right, quite right!' cried the boss, though what was quite right he hadn't the least idea. He came round by his desk, followed the shuffling footsteps to the door, and saw the old fellow out. Woodifield was gone.

For a long moment the boss stayed, staring at nothing, while the grey-haired office messenger, watching him, dodged in and out of his cubby-hole like a dog that expects to be taken for a run. Then: 'I'll see nobody for half an hour, Macey,' said the boss. 'Understand! Nobody at all.'

'Very good, sir.'

The door shut, the firm heavy steps recrossed the bright carpet, the fat body plumped down in the spring chair, and leaning forward, the boss covered his face with his hands. He wanted, he intended, he had arranged to weep....

It had been a terrible shock to him when old Woodifield sprang that remark upon him about the boy's grave. It was exactly as though the earth had opened and he had seen the boy lying there with Woodifield's girls staring down at him. For it was strange. Although over six years had passed away, the boss never thought of the boy except as lying unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for ever. 'My son!' groaned the boss. But no tears came yet. In the past, in the first months and even years after the boy's death, he had only to say those words to be overcome by such grief that nothing short of a violent fit of weeping could relieve him. Time, he had declared then, he had told everybody, could make no difference. Other men perhaps might recover, might live their loss down, but not he. How was it possible! His boy was an only son. Ever since his birth the boss had worked at building up this business for him; it had no other meaning if it was not for the boy. Life itself had come to have no other meaning. How on earth could he have slaved, denied himself, kept going all those years without the promise for ever before him of the boy's stepping into his shoes and carrying on where he left off?

And that promise had been so near being fulfilled. The boy had been in the office learning the ropes for a year before the war. Every morning they had started off together; they had come back by the same train. And what congratulations he had received as the boy's father! No wonder; he had taken to it marvellously. As to his popularity with the staff, every man jack of them down to old Macey couldn't make enough of the boy. And he wasn't in the least spoilt. No, he was just his bright natural self, with the right word for everybody, with that boyish look and his habit of saying, 'Simply splendid!'

But all that was over and done with as though it never had been. The day had come when Macey had handed him the telegram that brought the whole place crashing about his head. 'Deeply regret to inform you ...' And he had left the office a broken man, with his life in ruins.

Six years ago, six years.... How quickly time passed! It might have happened yesterday. The boss took his hands from his face; he was puzzled. Something seemed to be wrong with him. He wasn't feeling as he wanted to feel. He decided to get up and have a look at the boy's photograph. But it wasn't a favourite photograph of his; the expression was unnatural. It was cold, even stern-looking. The boy had never looked like that.

At that moment the boss noticed that a fly had fallen into his broad inkpot, and was trying feebly but desperately to clamber out again. Help! Help! said those struggling legs. But the sides of the inkpot were wet and slippery; it fell back again and began to swim. The boss took up a pen, picked the fly out of the ink, and shook it on to a piece of blotting-paper. For a fraction of a second it lay still on the dark patch that oozed round it. Then the front legs waved, took hold, and, pulling its small, sodden body up, it began the immense task of cleaning the ink from its wings. Over and under, over and under, went a leg along a wing as the stone goes over and under the scythe. Then there was a pause, while the fly, seeming to stand on the tips of its toes, tried to expand first one wing and then the other. It succeeded at last, and, sitting down, it began, like a minute cat, to clean its face. Now one could Imagine that the little front legs rubbed against each other lightly, joyfully. The horrible danger was over; it had escaped; it was ready for life again.

But just then the boss had an idea. He plunged his pen back into the ink, leaned his thick wrist on the blotting-paper, and as the fly tried its wings down came a great heavy blot. What would it make of that! What indeed! The little beggar seemed absolutely cowed, stunned, and afraid to move because of what would happen next. But then, as if painfully, it dragged itself forward. The front legs waved, caught hold, and, more slowly this time, the task began from the beginning.

He's a plucky little devil, thought the boss, and he felt a real admiration for the fly's courage. That was the way to tackle things; that was the right spirit. Never say die; it was only a question of... But the fly had again finished its laborious task, and the boss had just time to refill his pen, to shake fair and square on the new-cleaned body yet another dark drop. What about it this time? A painful moment of suspense followed. But behold, the front legs were again waving; the boss felt a rush of relief. He leaned over the fly and said to it tenderly, 'You artful little b...' And he actually had the brilliant notion of breathing on it to help the drying process. All the same, there was something timid and weak about its efforts now, and the boss decided that this time should be the last, as he dipped the pen deep into the inkpot.

It was. The last blot fell on the soaked blotting-paper, and the draggled fly lay in it and did not stir. The back legs were stuck to the body; the front legs were not to be seen.

'Come on,' said the boss. 'Look sharp!' And he stirred it with his pen--in vain. Nothing happened or was likely to happen. The fly was dead.

The boss lifted the corpse on the end of the paper-knife and flung it into the waste-paper basket. But such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively frightened. He started forward and pressed the bell for Macey.

'Bring me some fresh blotting-paper,' he said sternly, 'and look sharp about it.' And while the old dog padded away he fell to wondering what it was he had been thinking about before. What was it? It was ... He took out his handkerchief and passed it inside his collar. For the life of him he could not remember.

Included in Women, Men and the Great War, an anthology of stories edited by Trudi Tate, (Manchester University Press 1995)

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The Garderner #Rudyard Kipling #Prose

Every one in the village knew that Helen Turrell did her duty by all her world, and by none more honourably than by her only brother's unfortunate child. The village knew, too, that George Turrell had tried his family severely since early youth, and were not surprised to be told that, after many fresh starts given and thrown away he, an Inspector of Indian Police, had entangled himself with the daughter of a retired non-commissioned officer, and had died of a fall from a horse a few weeks before his child was born.

Mercifully, George's father and mother were both dead, and though Helen, thirtyfive and independent, might well have washed her hands of the whole disgraceful affair, she most nobly took charge, though she was, at the time, under threat of lung trouble which had driven her to the south of France. She arranged for the passage of the child and a nurse from Bombay, met them at Marseilles, nursed the baby through an attack of infantile dysentery due the carelessness of the nurse, whom she had had to dismiss, and at last, thin and worn but triumphant, brought the boy late in the autumn, wholly restored, to her Hampshire home.

All these details were public property, for Helen was as open as the day, and held that scandals are only increased by hushing then up. She admitted that George had always been rather a black sheep, but things might have been much worse if the mother had insisted on her right to keep the boy. Luckily, it seemed that people of that class would do almost anything for money, and, as George had always turned to her in his scrapes, she felt herself justified - her friends agreed with her - in cutting the whole non-commissioned officer connection, and giving the child every advantage. A christening, by the Rector, under the name of Michael, was the first step. So far as she knew herself, she was not, she said, a child-lover, but, for all her faults, she had been very fond of George, and she pointed out that little Michael had his father's mouth to a line; which made something to build upon.

As a matter of fact, it was the Turrell forehead, broad, low, and well-shaped, with the widely spaces eyes beneath it, that Michael had most faithfully reproduced. His mouth was somewhat better cut than the family type. But Helen, who would concede nothing good to his mother's side, vowed he was a Turrell all over, and, there being no one to contradict, the likeness was established.

In a few years Michael took his place, as accepted as Helen had always been - fearless, philosophical, and fairly good-looking. At six, he wished to know why he could not call her 'Mummy', as other boys called their mothers. She explained that she was only his auntie, and that aunties were not quite the same as mummies, but that, if it gave him pleasure, he might call her 'Mummy' at bedtime, for a pet-name between themselves.

Michael kept his secret most loyally, but Helen, as usual, explained the fact to her friends; which when Michael heard, he raged.

"Why did you tell? Why did you tell?" came at the end of the storm.

"Because it's always best to tell the truth", Helen answered, her arm round him as he shook in his cot.

"All right, but when the troof's ugly I don't think it's nice."

"Don't you, dear?"

"No, I don't and" - she felt the small body stiffen - "now you've told, I won't call you 'Mummy' any more - not even at bedtimes."

"But isn't that rather unkind?" said Helen softly.

"I don't care! I don't care! You have hurted me in my insides and I'll hurt you back. I'll hurt you as long as I live!"

"Don't, oh, don't talk like that, dear! You don't know what - "

"I will! And when I'm dead I'll hurt you worse!"

"Thank goodness, I shall be dead long before you, darling."

"Huh! Emma says, 'Never know your luck'." (Michael had been talking to Helen's elderly, flat-faces maid.) "Lots of little boys die quite soon. So'll I. Then you'll see!"

Helen caught her breath and moved towards the door, but the wail of 'Mummy! Mummy!' drew her back again, and the two wept together.

At ten years old, after two terms at a prep. school, something or somebody gave him the idea that his civil status was not quite regular. He attacked Helen on the subject, breaking down her stammered defences with the family directness.

"Don't believe a word of it", he said, cheerily, at the end. "People wouldn't have talked like they did if my people had been married. But don't you bother, Auntie. I've found out all about my sort in English Hist'ry and the Shakespeare bits. There was William the Conqueror to begin with, and - oh, heaps more, and they all got on first-rate. 'Twon't make any difference to you, by being that - will it?"

"As if anything could - " she began.

"All right. We won't talk about it any more if it makes you cry". He never mentioned the thing again of his own will, but when, two years later, he skilfully managed to have measles in the holidays, as his temperature went up tot the appointed one hundred and four he muttered of nothing else, till Helen's voice, piercing at last his delirium, reached him with assurance that nothing on earth or beyond could make any difference between them.

The terms at his public school and the wonderful Christmas, Easter, and Summer holidays followed each other, variegated and glorious as jewels on a string; and as jewels Helen treasured them. In due time Michael developed his own interests, which ran their courses and gave way to others; but his interest in Helen was constant and increasing throughout. She repaid it with all that she had of affection or could command of counsel and money; and since Michael was no fool, the War took him just before what was like to have been a most promising career.

He was to have gone up to Oxford, with a scholarship, in October. At the end of August he was on the edge of joining the first holocaust of public-school boys who threw themselves into the Line; but the captain of his O.T.C., where he had been sergeant for nearly a year, headed him off and steered him directly to a commission in a battalion so new that half of it still wore the old Army red, and the other half was breeding meningitis through living overcrowdedly in damp tents. Helen had been shocked at the idea of direct enlistment.

"But it's in the family", Michael laughed.

"You don't mean to tell me that you believed that story all this time?" said Helen. (Emma, her maid, had been dead now several years.) "I gave you my word of honour - and I give it again - that - that it's all right. It is indeed."

"Oh, that doesn't worry me. It never did", he replied valiantly. "What I meant was, I should have got into the show earlier if I'd enlisted - like my grandfather."

"Don't talk like that! Are you afraid of its ending so soon, then?"

"No such luck. You know what K. says."

"Yes. But my banker told me last Monday it couldn't possibly last beyond Christmas - for financial reasons."

"I hope he's right, but our Colonel - and he's a Regular - say it's going to be a long job."

Michael's battalion was fortunate in that, by some chance which meant several 'leaves', it was used for coast-defence among shallow trenches on the Norfolk coast; thence sent north to watch the mouth of a Scotch estuary, and, lastly, held for weeks on a baseless rumour of distant service. But, the very day that Michael was to have met Helen for four whole hours at a railway-junction up the line, it was hurled out, to help make good the wastage of Loos, and he had only just time to send her a wire of farewell.

In France luck again helped the battalion. It was put down near the Salient, where it led a meritorious and unexacting life, while the Somme was being manufactured; and enjoyed the peace of the Armentières and Laventie sectors when that battle began. Finding that it had sound views on protecting its own flanks and could dig, a prudent Commander stole it out of its own Division, under pretence of helping to lay telegraphs, and used it round Ypres at large.

A month later, and just after Michael had written Helen that there was noting special doing and therefore no need to worry, a shell-splinter dropping out of a wet dawn killed him at once. The next shell uprooted and laid down over the body what had been the foundation of a barn wall, so neatly that none but an expert would have guessed that anything unpleasant had happened.

By this time the village was old in experience of war, and, English fashion, had evolved a ritual to meet it. When the postmistress handed her seven-year-old daughter the official telegram to take to Miss Turrell, she observed to the Rector's gardener: "It's Miss Helen's turn now". He replied, thinking of his own son: "Well, he's lasted longer than some". The child herself came to the front-door weeping aloud, because Master Michael had often given her sweets. Helen, presently, found herself pulling down the house-blinds one after one with great care, and saying earnestly to each: "Missing always means dead." Then she took her place in the dreary procession that was impelled to go through an inevitable series of unprofitable emotions. The Rector, of course, preached hope end prophesied word, very soon, from a prison camp. Several friends, too, told her perfectly truthful tales, but always about other women, to whom, after months and months of silence, their missing had been miraculously restored. Other people urged her to communicate with infallible Secretaries of organizations who could communicate with benevolent neutrals, who could extract accurate information from the most secretive of Hun commandants. Helen did and wrote and signed everything that was suggested or put before her.

Once, on one of Michael's leaves, he had taken her over a munition factory, where she saw the progress of a shell from blank-iron to the all but finished article. It struck her at the time that the wretched thing was never left alone for a single second; and "I'm being manufactured into a bereaved next of kin", she told herself, as she prepared her documents.

In due course, when all the organizations had deeply or sincerely regretted their inability to trace, etc, something gave way within her and all sensations - save of thankfulness for the release - came to an end in blessed passivity. Michael had died and her world had stood still and she had been one with the full shock of that arrest. Now she was standing still and the world was going forward, but it did not concern her - in no way or relation did it touch her. She knew this by the ease with which she could slip Michael's name into talk and incline her head to the proper angle, at the proper murmur of sympathy.

In the blessed realization of that relief, the Armistice with all its bells broke over her and passed unheeded. At the end of another year she had overcome her physical loathing of the living and returned young, so that she could take them by the hand and almost sincerely wish them well. She had no interest in any aftermath, national or personal, of the war, but, moving at an immense distance, she sat on various relief committees and held strong views - she heard herself delivering them - about the site of the proposed village War Memorial.

Then there came to her, as next of kin, an official intimation, backed by a page of a letter to her in indelible pencil, a silver identity-disc and a watch, to the effect that the body of Lieutenant Michael Turrell had been found, identified, and re-interred in Hagenzeele Third Military Cemetery - the letter of the row and the grave's number in that row duly given.

So Helen found herself moved on to another process of the manufacture - to a world full of exultant or broken relatives, now strong in the certainty that there was an altar upon earth where they might lay their love. These soon told her, and by means of time-tables made clear, how easy it was and how little it interfered with life's affairs to go and see one's grave.

"So different", as the Rector's wife said, "if he'd been killed in Mesopotamia, or even Gallipoli."

The agony of being waked up to some sort of second life drove Helen across the Channel, where, in a new world of abbreviated titles, she learnt that Hagenzeele Third could be comfortably reached by an afternoon train which fitted in with the morning boat, and that there was a comfortable little hotel not three kilometres from Hagenzeele itself, where one could spend quite a comfortable night and see one's grave next morning. All this she had from a Central Authority who lived in a board and tar-paper shed on the skirts of a razed city of whirling lime-dust and blown papers.

"By the way", said he, "you know your grave, of course?"

"Yes, thank you", said Helen, and showed its row and number typed on Michael's own little typewriter. The officer would have checked it, out of one of his many books; but a large Lancashire woman thrust between them and bade him tell her where she might find her son, who had been corporal in the A.S.C. His proper name, she sobbed, was Anderson, but, coming of respectable folk, he had of course enlisted under the name of Smith; and had been killed at Dickiebush, in early 'Fifteen. She had not his number nor did she know which of his two Christian names she might have used with his alias; but her Cook's tourist ticket expired at the end of Easter week, and if by then she could not find her child she should go mad. Whereupon she fell forward on Helen's breast; but the officer's wife came out quickly from a little bedroom behind the office, and the three of them lifted the woman on to the cot.

"They are often like this", said the officer's wife, loosening the tight bonnet-strings. "Yesterday she said he'd been killed at Hooge. Are you sure you know your grave? It makes such a difference."

"Yes, thank you", said Helen, and hurried out before the woman on the bed should begin to lament again.

Tea in a crowded mauve and blue striped wooden structure, with a false front, carried her still further into the nightmare. She paid her bill beside a stolid, plain-featured Englishwoman, who, hearing her inquire about the train to Hagenzeele, volunteered to come with her.

"I'm going to Hagenzeele myself", she explained. "Not to Hagenzeele Third; mine is Sugar Factory, but they call it La Rosière now. It's just south of Hagenzeele Three. Have you got your room at the hotel there?"

"Oh yes, thank you, I've wired."

"That's better. Sometimes the place is quite full, and at others there's hardly a soul. But they've put bathrooms into the old Lion d'Or - that's the hotel on the west side of Sugar Factory - and it draws off a lot of people, luckily."

"It's all new to me. This is the first time I've been over."

"Indeed! This is my ninth time since the Armistice. Not on my own account. I haven't lost anyone, thank God - but, like everyone else, I've lot of friends at home who have. Coming over as often as I do, I find it helps them to have someone just look at the - place and tell them about it afterwards. And one can take photos for them, too. I get quite a list of commissions to execute." She laughed nervously and tapped her slung Kodak. "There are two or three to see at Sugar Factory this time, and plenty of others in the cemeteries all about. My system is to save them up, and arrange them, you know. And when I've got enough commissions for one area to make it worth while, I pop over and execute them. It does comfort people."

"I suppose so", Helen answered, shivering as they entered the little train.

"Of course it does. (Isn't lucky we've got windows-seats?) It must do or they wouldn't ask one to do it, would they? I've a list of quite twelve or fifteen commissions here" - she tapped the Kodak again - "I must sort them out tonight. Oh, I forgot to ask you. What's yours?"

"My nephew", said Helen. "But I was very fond of him".

"Ah, yes! I sometimes wonder whether they know after death? What do you think?"

"Oh, I don't - I haven't dared to think much about that sort of thing", said Helen, almost lifting her hands to keep her off.

"Perhaps that's better", the woman answered. "The sense of loss must be enough, I expect. Well I won't worry you any more."

Helen was grateful, but when they reached the hotel Mrs Scarsworth (they had exchanged names) insisted on dining at the same table with her, and after the meal, in the little, hideous salon full of low-voiced relatives, took Helen through her 'commissions' with biographies of the dead, where she happened to know them, and sketches of their next of kin. Helen endured till nearly half-past nine, ere she fled to her room.

Almost at one there was a knock at her door and Mrs Scarsworth entered; her hands, holding the dreadful list, clasped before her.

"Yes - yes - I know", she began. "You're sick of me, but I want to tell you something. You - you aren't married, are you? Then perhaps you won't... But it doesn't matter. I've got to tell someone. I can't go on any longer like this."

"But please -" Mrs Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and her mouth worked dryly.

"In a minute", she said. "You - you know about these graves of mine I was telling you about downstairs, just now? They really are commissions. At least several of them are." Here eye wandered round the room. "What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don't you think? ... Yes. I swear they are commissions. But there's one, d'you see, and - and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand?"

Helen nodded.

"More than anyone else. And, of course, he oughtn't to have been. He ought to have been nothing to me. But he was. He is. That's why I do the commissions, you see. That's all."

"But why do you tell me?" Helen asked desperately.

"Because I'm so tired of lying. Tired of lying - always lying - year in and year out. When I don't tell lies I've got to act 'em and I've got to think 'em, always. You don't know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn't to have been - the real thing - the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I've had to pretend he wasn't. I've had to watch every word I said, and think out what lie I'd tell next, for years and years!"

"How many years?" Helen asked.

"Six years and four months before, and two and three-quarters after. I've gone to him eight times, since. Tomorrow I'll make the ninth, and - and I can't - I can't go to him again with nobody in the world knowing. I want to be honest with someone before I go. Do you understand? It doesn't matter about me. I was never truthful, even as a girl. But it isn't worthy of him. So - so I - I had to tell you. I can't keep it up any longer. Oh, I can't!"

Next morning Mrs Scarsworth left early on her round of commissions, and Helen walked alone to Hagenzeele Third. The place was still in the making, and stood some five or six feet above the metalled road, which it flanked for hundreds of yards. Culverts across a deep ditch served for entrances through the unfinished boundary wall. She climbed a few woodenfaced earthen steps and then met the entire crowded level of the thing in one held breath. She did not know that Hagenzeele Third counted twenty-one thousand dead already. All she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass; nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead, rushing at her. She went forward, moved to the left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own. A great distance away there was a line of whiteness. It proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves whose headstones had already been set, whose flowers were planted out, and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut letters at the ends of the rows, and, referring to her slip, realized that it was not here she must look.

A man knelt behind a line of headstones - evidently a gardener, for he was firming a young plant in the soft earth. She went towards him, her paper in her hand. He rose at her approach and without prelude or salutation asked: "Who are you looking for?"

"Lieutenant Michael Turrell - my nephew", said Helen slowly and word for word, as she had many thousands of times in her life.

The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion before he turned from the fresh-sown grass toward the naked black crosses.

"Come with me", he said, "and I will show you where your son lies."

When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener.

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