The Storyteller.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2425, 13 February 1909, Page 10 (Supplement)

The Storyteller.

iN'A-NtfW-’S jE j AJIWS V. l " ,l J |i Dili Ynb I l^ sigllCd l . j'^rs 1 ’'tih rdilei:., ,< who was turning Nancy’s last slim- , . jiyetr-’srdrek* iit odle-r Hibar - nw 1 , iiW Hli:^ 11 in a|on a 1 j «**{ a nifi'vb" 'Skill 1, allow, “u aybp;ly spend a cent- \\ itliout j for it. Nancy: would lmvc a* line a. gown as Squire .Redmond’.' ( daughter. It’s enough to wear tin life out of one, this constant twist t ■ ing and turning of things, year site; year, till there ain’t a thread of ’em ( left/’ 1 “Well,” said Nancy, who had beer. . vexing herself over the tiimming ol 1 her last year's hat. “if wishes were horses beggars would ride and we dln j sure to get a lift. But I'd certainly , like to see how ’twould seem to ruh | in my own carriage. And I d l'k' , a silk gown that would stand alone, i with a train as long as the moral law. j and to go sweeping up and down v: , hig parlor over a velvet carpet. I ° You go and look after the pie- , plant, Nancy,” said Airs Gardner, . “while I finish this up. It's mighty ] discouraging to have to fix up old clothes. Maybe if your Uncle John , had to pinch a little himself he'd hml , out how pleasant it is. It’s more than provoking to think of all that money being in the family, so to speak, ami yet shut -up in a bank, doing nobody any g«od. And perhaps when he dies he may leave it to some charitable institution. John always was a contrary creature.” . While Nancy, prepared the pieplant she built castles out of Uncle John s timber. “I don’t exactly wish him to die.” she told herself, “but it would be so nice to have everything you want and wear kid gloves and fancy shoes and never have to do the cooking or sprawl your bauds out of shape at the washtub. Still,.! don’t know. It’s awfully nice on the farm when the peas are coming up and the larches arc coming out and the fields getting greener every day, and when the scarlet beans are in blossom. Jhen, there isn’t anything to. compare with the apple blows, ‘except my cheeks, Walter says, but Walter’s a goose.

sometimes.” Just then a shadow darkened ti.-c kitchen door and Walter Jackson s honest, bronzed face beamed upon her and made the kitchen fairly radiant with its rmile. It mattered very little to Nancy Gardner in that instant whether she sat in a hovel or palace; whether the walls were hung with tapestry or were simply white-washed. She forgot all about L ncle John a wealth ; the petty things that annoyed • her vanished like tog before the sun For Walter loved her, and did not that make amends for all? c. “Good morning, Walter, ” ..f Nanay. “You have made yourself a “stranger lately. Come in and sit down band give an account of yourself.” “You see,” began her lover. “I -Would not get away last night, bebfsuso mother had some friends from town and she wanted me to stay and ■J Uni use them.” “Indeed!” said Nancy shortly, and U liaekccl spitefully at the luckless r»e plant. Then she reflected a little. Perhaps these “friends” were some •'Riiisfolk, some elderly dames. In that .case,j?ho would put up with it —if only . they were not the Adams girls, who Ih&fcb’boarded last summer at Walter’s mother’s for country air and country *¥are, who had ridden with him on the Ai,a,y, cart and hunted butterflies in the fields. Also they had worn fashion'abß* s ’dresses and jaunty hats into the little vestry, had called her "a pretty a@Hiy.try- -lass’ ’ and kept her heart in a constant flutter. No, no! 'lf WalWi I "lilt'd ’stayed at home to entertain girls, she should feel it her duty to-be aggrieved. b-'WYA'd' who were your friends from town?”, she asked, trying hard to imfl-MllM j: . ' speak with indifference. -•s<“iWoll}»you see, it was an, accident brought them here —” ■ IW W/! date say !” “They were going on to Palmerville ill theiirrown—carriage—” “1 kiyjijvyijts the Adamses,” thought NTfifYir lu-ru • fl-HAndlfthey got run into just as they iWiWt urn nl r !viw<> rtu na 'f e > ” remarfeu Nancy, frigidly]-. ttU/Yds(, iwasn’tl'it ? And. so, of course; Uihy' <k l m'i' , to our house and ,ipethe”: o ,she jpirsiuaded them to spend the nigiitvSuS to take them over thkH'Aftbrstowi with our tea n, which lflWMs LufW’llaildily, as I was going Carriage iS aU 1,1 splinters.” -(Now; bhdrp' ihaid tbecn some talk of N’a^cy’ s• '^iHjg l ’to ,; P.almerville bn this occasion truth must be told, it was to do. credit to tins little journey AjpoWW lo remodelled hei liafc and gown. . imf J'iMWMAib JMcle John’s heiress,”. she rnusedtl T'm^mrnfally, ‘ he wouldn’t dare to treat me so. I ben h&HiWtli Her discretion and slip.,j;ur,tK|d, Ojiy.^.ltfV,i with flashsll » eyes. ..o-huwCm- <>: 1 “Let me tell you ibis, she said, atsgmlv, AtiF ymjygmto palmerville ioclayi'lrithi'hlienidior JanM other day, you again.; “Wiry, Nancy, what is the matter with’ , ybiVr r,u ’iib cried. “Not go with them to Palmerville? It would be downright uncivil, and, then, mother

, nu ■nr.*-',; wished ■■itJ’ivT'/. J ; ! > f >(1 1 j “And I do'not wish it ! \Y’o, s shall Scd'whokj'v/ish li'aS'tho most. Influence iy ; “ Well/’Nancy |,r don't want to displease ’y oil Hut I shall certainly go.” “Then you needn't como back to me.” “Nancy, do you really, mean it? Lthis final?” “X do mean it, and you will find that it is final.” There was no mistaking the resolution with which the words were uttered, and Walter, without hazarding a reply, walked out of the house and went home. The breach thus created had lastou for over two weeks, and Nancy, re grottiug her hasty action, yet to< proud to acknowledge herself in the wrong, suffered in silence. That sin bad been guilty of a mistake regard ing her supposed rivals was a fact .of which she was soon to receive proof One night she attended a quiltin' party, at which she did her'best tt appear lively, while she stitched in herring bone and diamond, for Walter might come in the evening with some of the other guests. And then, at least, she would be able to see him. a species of self-torture-that she coveted. The sharp tones of little Mis> Hudson, the dressmaker, interrupted her meditations. 81 io was telling .the sewing circle of the. fright she received two weeks before, when “a runaway horse ran plump into a carriage with two women folks in it and broke everything to splinters.” “What became of the women?’ inquired Nancy’s right-hand neighbor. “Oh, they picked themselves up as pert as could be and a man came ami helped straighten ’em out. They weren’t hurt much, only shaken up and scratched.”

“Ah,” commented her auditor. “I remember now. They were the folks that were staying at Jackson’s place. I saw Walter take them off in his carriage to Palmerville the next day. i suppose you know all about it. Native?” she said, turning to that

young person. “Who might they have been?” asked Miss Hudson, curiously. •‘The—the Adams girls, I suppose." stammered Nancy, hut Miss Hudson shook her head contemptuously. “It wasn't the. Adams girls or nobody like them.” she declared. "‘They were two elderly women. One had gray curls and both wore black goam —riot fashionable at all. You couldn't mistake them for the Adams girls, no matter how you tried.”

Nancy drew a long breath. She was in the wrong, but yet it was a relief to know that Walter bad not slighted her wishes for the sake of the detested Adams grls. What must lie have thought of her objecting to have him take two elderly ladies to Palmerville and how could she hope to make amends for her lolly. - '

It. was late when Walter joined the crowd of merrymakers. He was coldly polite to Nancy and, try as she might, she could find no opportunity of speaking to him alone. Winio she was racking her brain to devise some scheme whereby she could offer him an explanation a. messenger from her father arrived, who requested her to return home at once, stating that, they had received news of a startling and unexpected nature- Surprised at the • unlocked for summons, she hastened to comply, and on reaching her home found her mother tn an almost hysterical state of excitement. “You’ll hardly believe it, Nancy, said tho worthy matron, “but we’re rich people at last. Your uncle John has gone and left us all his property. “I wish he hadn’t died,” said her daughter ,sadly. “We’ve always been longing for his money, and that s the same thing as wishing for his death. I feel as if we had killed him.” “Don’t he foolish,” commented her mother, sharply. “He had to die some time, and I’m sure there’s nobody had a better right to his money than we did.”

Nancy made no reply. Strangely enough, now that wealth had come, it no longer had any attraction for her, and then —oh, dreadful remembrance ! —-Walter had once said, when she was teasing him about Elsie Wayne Redmond, the squire’s daughter: “I shall never ask a rich woman to marry me, Nancy, never!” And now she was a rich woman and all hopes of a reconciliation with Walter were surely at an end. During the rest of that eventful w*ek Nancy fretted continually, much to her mother’s surprise, for in his lifetime Uncle John had not been regarded with any great amount of affection by the members of the Gardner family. The afternoon was very still and sunny, the shadows of the lime trees wore a delicato tracery upon the grass plots outside. Now and then a bird winged across , the skyline, or a bee hummed lazily in at the open window. Sweet odors tangled in the wind swept abroad like spirits, manifest but invisible. One .seemed to hear nature astir and gnawing athwart the silence. Presently there came a step,, deliberate as fate’s, along the . gravel; some .one unhasped tho gate; it croaked on its hinges as.it swung back; then the steps came on towards the house. The shadow of a tall man blotted tho patch of sunshine that fell in

at the broad window. Nancy .stopped Jenputd. ani| Bhoift paused, |mu{|l|eriiig ?ai Imr^"'pillfntatMg 1 * wldt; throat,.-. ...q, , ..... m ! “Hello, Naofiy !” rang out a cheer, nybk‘C7o^is' )r ilha'ti | jk)iV or'”j , b l i\f 1 '{Jlmst?/ h (>r cheeks, Nancy had heM..{Us«jßa^?H)\uHi 1 ~tfie peak oHthemiitrtidfcr and/ was, crying upon his shoilldei’sV : ' r ‘

“Oh, Undo John!” she whispered tlirougli lior tears. “I’m so glad, so glad! You’re not really dead, - are you? It was all a stupid mistake.” “Just so,‘]ittlo girl,” responded her uncle blithely, “case of mistaken identity; my companion in the stateroom was foolish enough to fall overboard on the homeward voyage and through tho stupidity of tho purser’s clerk they named me as tho victim. But what are you crying for, Nancy? I. had no idea you cared such a lot for your old uncle. And remember what a pile of money you have lost by my coining to life again.” “I hate the old money!” cried Nancy, impetuously. “It caused mo more misery than anything in the world. When we were poor I was always wishing we had some of it and when the news of your death came I felt as if I had helped to murder you.” Uncle John laughed aloud. “You are not a hypocrite, anyhow, Nance,” he said, dryly. “And when you marry I’ll see that you get a nice wedding dower as a reward for your truthfulness.”

“I shall never marry,” returned Nancy, in tremulous accents. “Walter will never forgive me.” “Tell mo all about the trouble,” said Uncle John, and Nancy, glad to find a sympathizer, related the story of her woe.

Uncle John listened attentively ami a few hours later betook himself tt: the Jackson homestead.

That night Nancy and her lover stood together at the old trysting place in the garden. “I didn’t even give you time to explain,’ the girl was saying timidly —“and, oh, Walter can you ever pardon me for my wicked jealousy ?” For answer, he put his arms around her and as she lifted her face to his she saw in his dark eyes that looked upon her the tender light of a love that would never fade.