Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE BULLY OF at the market price if she’d promise to stop raisin’ °em and go in for grapefruit or gar- den stuff, but she allows she don’t want to farm. Her daddy raised hogs and what was good enough for her daddy is good enough for her. She’s just stubborn, and them hogs of hers have done more damage around this section than the thrips and the last freeze.” “Then all I can do,” said Teddy bitterly, “is to settle up and shut up?” “ That’s all,” affirmed Mr. Pocock. “The damned little bully!” growled Teddy. “ That’s what we call her,” agreed the grocery store man. “Til show her!” said the hog murderer. “ You better get up before the sun does,” Mr. Pocock advised him. Teddy returned to his plantation filled with anger and loathing. The time was now past when he could consider Georgia Michi- gan Woodstock as a girl with charming or alluring attributes. She had become a men- ace, a deadly enemy, and hereafter he was going to deal with her on that basis. His peace of mind was not materially add- ed to by his discovery on making a survey of the damage the hogs had done to his to- matoes and yams, that his loss would amount to approximately three hundred dollars. She had, in brief, cost him, to date, some- thing more than five hundred dollars and a pride-crushing half hour in a lemon tree. And there was, looking at it any way one pleased, no weak spot in her armor. She was impervious to attack from any direc- tion. Damn _ her! Teddy Armbister fell to brooding about it. He had never, so far back as he could remember, had cause to hate anybody be- fore. He had been an easy going, sunny, ami- able young man, and unless something was done about it, he was going to transform himself into an old grouch. This girl had him under her heel—had had him under her heel, in some way or another, since his first day in Florida. There wasn’t, appar- ently, a kindly, good, human spot in her, She was nothing but a bully. He mailed her a check for two hundred and ten dollars. BISCAYNE BAY. And two nights later an incident oc curred—rather, a stirring adventure—which left Teddy Armbister stunned and bewil- dered. ; An unexpected, early spring freeze siruck at the citrus groves of all Florida. VITl. Treppy ARMBISTER had spent the evening 519 reading a thick, finely printed book de- scribing the sundry ailments to which grape- fruit and orange trees were heir; but he had not been able to concentrate. He had pro- gressed as far as the chapter on aphids and the employment of nicotine sulphate when the tantalizing face of Georgia Michigan Woodstock floated between his eyes and the type. For some minutes he sat glowering at the page. It had occurred to him that the - girl next door bore a close resemblance to these aphids, those vile little insects which attacked and destroyed peaceable and prof- itable trees. They, too, were ruthless and all but vulnerable. You sprayed them with nicotine sulphate and they shriveled and died. He would like to spray Georgia Michigan Woodstock with nicotine sulphate in a concentrated form. The vision of her face now took full pos- session of his consciousness. It was be- witchingly lovely; her eyes were glowing softly with a dream. Now the picture changed. Her eyes were snapping and sparkling with enmity; her lips were drawn in a tight little grimace. What maddened him was the prank his disordered mind persisted in playing on him. He would place his hands firmly upon that round, slender neck; he would shake her this way and that so vigorously that her feet would dangle about in the breeze like tassels. And at that point his mind would play the prank. | Suddenly, her eyes would brim with tears. sobs of repentence, contrition—surrender— would shake her body; and the scene next would portray him holding her fiercely in his arms and kissing the tears away. Teddy Armbister fired the book on citrus _ culture into the farthest corner. <A spider with a body an inch through, brooding in (E(0) mM =) choo con