Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

| -particular so. springtime was comin’ on with its robins . 666 — ARGOSV-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. once, and I seen Elizabeth’s chin go up| a degree as she swept by, and I seen Sadie wink at a strange man standing in the door of the post office. So dazzled that feller was he nearly fell offen the step. I move it is the sense of the meeting that Sadie made a hit with the boys, and some of them boys had gray in their hair, if they had any hair. Unanimous? I thought it ’d be. Now, I suppose the notion is that Sadie fell for all of them and let ’em tote her around one after the other. I suppose there is a general feeling that Sadie was out for a good time only. Not so. She did go to dances with one young feller and another and auto riding with them that had autos, and to picture plays and the like, but to offset that there is that scene in the drug store. | . . ‘Sadie had come in and bought a cake of ‘soap. It was in the spring and kind of chilly, and Sadie had gone home and put on her old sweater and her red tam. The sweater was open at the throat, showin’ her gleamin’ skin, and the tam was tilted on one side over her ‘curls. ‘She always looked chipper, -but to-night she looked Mebbe it was because the and flowers and such. Ah, men, that little cirl was kin somehow to flowers and birds” and such like things! | Well, she had got her cake of soap and had paid for it with a piece of silver, a smile, and a bob of her curly head, when -all the boys of the town, seemed like, had sudden business at the drug store. Each was there to walk with Sadie if she elected to walk, to take her for a ride if they had. cars, to take her to a picture show— Oh, ~ Fraser, on his way home from “Lije’s store, ° on his way home to his ma. I wasn’t there at the time, but they do say that Jimmie stopped dead in his tracks and looked down at Sadie. I don’t know if them two had ever met before, but if they had it wasn’t a real meeting. This was a real meeting. They say that Jimmie stood and stared for a minute at Sadie close under him, for he was a head taller than her, and then he took off his cap and gave her a bow in this here grand manner, and Sadie let her smile die and a kind of a funny look come into her blue eyes and—well, the result was she and Jimmie went walkin’ down the street together’ and that was the be- ginning of the end or the beginning of the beginning, whichever you like. I ain’t ar- — bitrary in these matters. | Neither of them had any leisure time af- ter that. When they wasn’t working at their respective jobs they was with each other. They didn’t go places where people was; they seemed to: want to be where people wasn’t; and so it was some time before Elizabeth learned how the wind was setting. When she did find out, she stirred up a little hurricane herself. J had all this from headquarters—from Elizabeth herself—so I know it’s straight. Elizabeth pleaded with her only son to give up ‘ that girl.” “ That girl,” I imag- ine was bad enough for Jimmie, but her © tone, if I know anything about her, was worse. Jimmie flew clean off the handle. You see, that boy had some of old Bob’s stuff in him, and he was young, whereas Bob had been getting along in years when Elizabeth first begun to pull the haughty stuff. “Also, whereas Elizabeth was- Bob’s anything that Sadie desired could of been—dearly beloved wife, she was only Jimmie’s hers. They was all so eager that there was a reg’lar jam in the drug store door- way behind them that had been lucky enough to get inside. Sadie looked over the mob and.she laughed. Her laugh just then was like little tinklin’ bells. “Shoo,” she says. ‘Shoo, all of you! Let me'and my cake of soap escape this riot.” ‘ The boys fell back all a-goggle and Sadie plunged through them and went out on the sidewalk and come bang up against Jimmie mother. And I figure that when mothers with gray hair begin to nib in on their sons’ love affairs them mothers are away - off on their reckonings. Age don’t know nothing about youth, in spite of the fact that age was once youth its own self. Pleading getting her nowhere, Elizabeth - made a big mistake. She commanded Jimmie to give up “ that girl.” She said things about the girl. She thought she was drawing a picture, but for a fact it was only a cartoon. She wound up by saying that NOO C@ nn Cc