315
B u s i n e s s
July 1931
T h e
K i n g ’ s
^ ¡ f fe a r i io Ç ^ fe a r i iv iili ( ¿ ) u r \ OUNG READERS . . . By FLORENCE NYE WHITWELL jjb
ashes in the mouth—an air which sat rather oddly upon his sleek young person. “H ’m ! When I find Mary Ann McGinnis, who kept a milliner store back home, sellin’ hats down here, what do I see in her store or shoppy window? Jest one hat on top of a reg’lar stilt, and in th’ other corner a little parade of carved baby elephants—the biggest of ’em no bigger’n my thumb, and the littlest the size of a watch charm. ‘Land! What are you sellin’, Mary Ann McGinnis?’ I asks her. ‘And what would your Pa say if I told him you was in the elephant business ?’ ” “What’d she say ?” asked Marguerite with interest. “Oh, she laughed an’ turned pink and said, ‘Hush, Aunt Mary! I ’m a creator of artistic headgear. And my name is Anne Marie—I just turned it around.’ And she shows me a little hat label with ‘Anne Marie, New York, Paris, Desert Dream’ on it.” “She should have included Hollywood,” Pansy was beginning when she was interrupted by a strange, rasp ing boy’s voice. They turned to see Zachariah, his ac cordion hanging around his neck, standing there. He was the most popular of all the Mountain Boys and was priv ileged to wander from table to table amusing the guests. He was attired in a waistcoat, an old shirt, a large hat, and some overalls. “Be you the avalator?” he accosted the Steady Young Man, who hardly seemed to hear him, and who replied absently as he flicked some ashes, “Eh, what?” Zack turned tp Aunt Mary who said kindly, “Yes! He’s an aviator. He don’t understand your outlandish talk. How old are you, my boy? You’re pretty tall.” Zack mumbled, “’Bout seventeen—I dunno! Ain’t sure when muh birthday comes.” Something in the boy’s face struck her kind heart. His eyes had a homeless look, she said later on. “You’ve seen some trouble, you poor child!” Zack moved uncomfortably a step away. “Now you just wait and listen to me,” she continued, as she enclosed his hand in her own kind work-hardened palm, and was astonished to find its texture soft and smooth— no laborer’s hand! “Zack, I ’m like a grandma to a lot o’ young folks up in Hollywood. I ’m just old- fashioned, but there’s something I want you to know. If you’re in trouble, take it to the Lord. He wants to be your Saviour and, until you rest your whole weight on Him, you won’t be happy—or look happy.” Pansy and Marguerite had taken to inspecting their ultra-carmine nails very studiously, and the Steady Young Man had become absorbed in his ashtray. Zack looked at them as if with a desperate hope that they would intervene. They gave no help, however. Then suddenly he spoke in an entirely different tone and accent from those of the Mountain Boys. “I ’ve heard that sort of talk before,” he said angrily and walked away without his usual shambling gait. The girls stared at each other, saying simultaneously, “What do you think of th a t!”
RAINBOW ( Continued from last month)
“And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living crea ture . . . I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud” (Gen. 9 :12-14). mm h e r e was Rodney? That was the all-absorbing topic on the great ocean-going steamer that carried Constance and Althea back to America with Althea’s mother. Beatrice, they felt, would be secure. She had seemed so steady and controlled as they had told her that they must leave her behind—that it would be better for her not to know all the why’s and wherefore’s yet. She had been a little pale, to be sure, but had said simply,, “Then perhaps I am not yet at the end of my rainbow.” The girls spoke of her lovingly and prayed often for her. But the problem of the boy cousin who had so strangely vanished troubled them most. Where was Rodney ? * * * It was the crowded late dinner hour in the largest hotel at Desert Dream. There were other hotels and ranches de luxe at Desert Dream, but this was the hotel. Its very name, Mirage, beckoned the weary with the promise of a charmed remoteness, away from the rushing, rattling world. By day, the everlasting sunshine illumined an at mosphere that was dry and luminous. At rosy sunset, the encircling foothills and mountains became ardently ame thystine. And just now, as night was deepening, the stars became near neighbors in the clear air, and their shining a glory. The Mountain Boys were popular at Desert Dream. Every night they came, riding in on their horses—“nags,” they called them—to strum rythmically and softly on their guitars and to sing the songs of long ago, while Zach- ariah’s accordion gently throbbed its undertone. Joshua’s boyish yodle was the delight of the tired business man, and Abel’s golden tenor in “My Ain Countree” relaxed the worn-out nerves of the wealthy. “I ’d rather hear them than all your high grand opera!” exclaimed Aunt Mary to her nieces, Pansy and Mar guerite, as they lingered over their dessert to listen to them. “Hush, Aunt Mary!” Marguerite looked nervously around. “It’s foolish to compare them to opera. And do be careful not to pronounce it ‘grand uproar!’ ” Aunt Mary sighed. _ ’ “Well! I ’ve done wishin’ I was back in Indiana! But these boys do my old heart good.” “You find it different on the Pacific slope?” Pansy’s admirer—whom Aunt Mary called her “steady young man”—asked, with the somewhat weary air of an expe rienced worldling who has found earth’s golden apples but
*
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker