The Argosy for May — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

378 lost in vain seeking of each other through the crowded store. Still, she was only twenty minutes late; her niece would wait for her. Yet, she thought worriedly, she should not have parted from the girl at all. There was Marion’s troublesome love- affair, Miss Hutchison remembered with a catch of her breath. When the niece had confessed to her love for Tom Somebody-or-other (her aunt did not know who nor what he was), she had put her foot emphatically down upon the match. “You are too young — entirely too young!” was her one objection—the un- alterable answer to her niece’s every argument. She refused to see the girl’s lover, turned a deaf ear to all praise of his good qualities, and at last, driven to desperation, was preparing to . carry Marion off with her to Europe. ‘“She’s a dear,” the girl informed T’om Clinton, who raved vainly over the im- possibility of the situation ; “and I know she’d agree with me that you're one, too, if she’d only agree to see you. But she won't. “T’m all she has to love iy the world, Tom, and she hates to lose me-yet. In a year or so I’m sure she’ll change her mind. But, until then, we’ll just have to wait. And, remember, she thinks she’s doing the best thing for me. She’s really a darling.” 7 The “ darling”? now turned down the aisle containing the glove department. The passageway between the two counters was comparatively deserted; her swift glance down its length unobstructed. And Marion was not there. Her worst fears were realized. had missed each other. She would ask the salesgirl if any one answering to her neice’s description had been there. Miss Hutchison stepped hastily forward. She was within two yards of the coun- ter and breathlessly hurrying on—when she stopped short with a startled gasp. Lying beside a pile of boxes on the counter was a plain, black-leather shop- ping-case—her bag! With widened eyes she stared at the chatelaine. There could be no doubt about it; it was her own. They THE ARGOSY. Even at that distance she could see plainly a long scratch on its upturned side—a mark she remembered accidental- ly to have been made some time before with a hat-pin. She readily understood how the bag came on the counter. She had carelessly left it behind when she went away from the department a half-hour ago. But—she raised the black-leather case she held in her hands—but if the bag on the counter was hers, to whom did the one she carried belong? The young man who gave it to her told her that he had picked it up behind her on the floor. She did not have her own bag with her; therefore he had thought the case hers, since she alone, probably, of all the women about him, was empty- handed. And her mistake in taking the strange chatelaine was no less simple than his error in giving it to her. her hands was the exact duplicate, in point of size and general appearance, of her own—of a thousand others in daily use. Without the scratch upon her bag, she could not have told the difference be- tween the two, even if they were placed side by side before her. Here she had been carrying around a strange shopping-case under the impres- sion that it was her own—congratulating herself upon the recovery of her, bag— and all the time her precious chatelaine, the receptacle of her money and _ the steamer tickets, zas lost! For over half an hour that unpreten- tious-appearing shopping-case had been lying in plain view on the counter. And in it was over two thousand dollars in bills—to say nothing of the six hundred dollars’ worth of tickets as well. surely good fortune followed in her footsteps to-day. She had thought herself lucky when the bag she imagined to be her own was returned to her. Now, she was really fortunate in actually recover- ing her property. Miss Hutchison stepped quickly to the counter. 7 “T left my bag here a few minutes ago,” she said to the saleswoman. ‘‘ That is it,’ reaching out her hand to the case before her. “IT beg your pardon,” replied the girl, picking up the bag and laying it down (EO) 9)(0)(6) ANG <S The case in (C@