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so butchered. There was not the slightest foundation for all that rot-it was made up out of whole cloth." I was boiling about Miss Leigh.

"Pooh-pooh! My dear boy, you'll never make an editor. Why, we had two extraswhat with that and the grand ball last night. The newsboys are crying it all over town." "I don't care if they are. I don't want to be an editor if one has to tell such atrocious lies as that. But I don't believe editors have to do that, and I know reputable editors don't. Why, you have named a man who was a hundred miles away."

He simply laughed.

"Well, I'm quite willing to get the credit of that paper. You know you write better than you talk," he added patronizingly.

"I tell you what I'll do—if you'll write me every day on some live topic

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"I'll never write you a line again on any topic alive or dead, unless you die yourself, when I'll write that you are the biggest liar I ever saw except my Jeams."

I had expected he would resent my words, but he did not. He only laughed, and said, "That's a good line. Write on that.”

I learned later that he had had a slight raise of salary on the paper he palmed off as his. I could only console myself with the hope that Miss Leigh would not see the article.

But Miss Leigh did see the appreciation of her father in the writing of which I had had a hand, and it cost me many a dark hour of sad repining.

(To be continued.)

GERALDINE IN SWITZERLAND

I

By Mrs. W. K. Clifford

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG

ERALDINE'S people lived at North Kensington. They were of no consequence, There were three daughters, all grown up. Edith, the eldest, was engaged to a deaf young man, an accountant or something of that sort; he came every Sunday at halfpast one and stayed till a quarter to eleven. Geraldine told her sister quite frankly that he was a freak, and her contempt was obvious to every one but the object of it. She herself was the second daughter. The third, Ada, had a queer little treble voice, a perpetual smile, and yellow hair. She practiced a great deal on the piano and was supposed to be pretty. Geraldine frequently longed to shake her, and regretted that a favorable opportunity did not occur.

The means of the Lawton family were limited. Edith considered that household matters and the entertainment of Mr. Morris (the accountant young man), together with the contemplation of her future

position at Brondesbury and the arrangement of a possible villa there, were sufficient to occupy her. Ada occasionally gave a few music lessons, rather as a favor and in a depreciating manner, to young ladies of the Notting Hill district: she heard of them usually at the circulating library.

Geraldine, tall and slim and pale, with a spice of humor in her dark eyes and a streak of red here and there in her dark hair, was a disturbing quantity in the family. She laughed at many of its ways, and was openly impatient of them; to the astute observer it would have been evident that in the near future a crisis would come about. It did-when it occurred to the Lawton family to take as paying guests a couple of thin and elderly spinster cousins, whose mother had lately retired gratefully to Kensal Green. They were surprised at Geraldine, and, being relations, considered that they had a right to explain their views concerning her (in confidence, of course,) to other members of the family. She was told of them (also in confidence) and, since she did not see her way to throwing things at

the ladies, was irritated. One night she walked in from the dressing-room, in which she slept alone, to the large one with two beds allotted to her sisters.

"Girls," she said, "I'm tired of this, and mean to get out of it."

Edith was trying on a lace collar before the glass. "Oh!" she said without being much interested.

Ada, who was brushing her hair, looked up. "What do you mean?" she asked.

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"What I say. Lots of girls are bachelors nowadays. I shall take rooms somewhere and trim hats or set up a typewriting office -do something anyway."

"You can't!" One girl said it, the other thought it.

"I can learn. I'm not a fool-I've always done my own hats. If I were pretty enough, I'd go on the stage." Her sisters made no remark. "I can't stand those two old cats any longer, and I'm tired of the life here; there's nothing in it. Besides, I don't think it right for three of us to live on the parents. I shall clear out for one."

VOL. XLV.-24

candor. "I'm just explaining that I'm not going to stay here any longer. I have some of grandfather's money left, thank goodness" that amiable gentleman had died a year ago and left the girls a hundred pounds each. "I shall set up with it somehow and get on-you'll see."

She did and they saw.

Three months later she had learnt how to typewrite, and established herself in a little office two doors from Westbourne Grove. At first she had nothing to do. But she was tall and graceful, there was lurking mischief in her smile, and she had an air of alertness that arrested attention.

T

Gradually the City gentlemen, who passed on the tops of omnibuses, became aware of it-they saw her arrive and open the office door, or depart and close it; and the literary ladies of Westbourne Park had heard of her. The gentlemen dropped in before ten or after five to dictate their letters; she soon grasped their methods and became a valuable typist. The literary ladies thought her sympathetic, and cooed over her. They were a little disappointed when they found that she was inclined to hustle them out of the office and insisted on ready money; but she copied their stories and fashion articles so well that they decided not to withdraw their custom.

clerks and a pupil. The pupil had dark frizzy hair and looked like an idiot. Geraldine mentally called her one, for she couldn't spell, and she made the keys of the machine sticky owing to her weakness for nougat; but she did to fill up or to send on errands. The office was a going concern, and the head of it triumphant.

But it was not till the following year that the romance of her life came about. She had paid her rent, raised the salaries of her clerks, satisfied her modest but excellent taste in dress, and saved a little money. When August came, the majority of her customers were away. One of the clerks was at Yarmouth, and the idiot with the

In twelve months' time she had two parents at Shepherd's Bush, where she was

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entertaining a touch of enteric brought about by drinking unfiltered water. It occurred to Geraldine that the remaining clerk could perfectly well look after the business till September, and that she herself would go to Switzerland. She had never been abroad, but here was a chance. It was possible to go very cheaply, and once you were there the mountains would look the same, no matter how you managed to get to them; and whatever you suffered on the way you would forget all about in six months' time and remember only the places you had seen. So she took a thirdclass return to Lausanne via Dieppe and Paris. The crossing was horrible, but there were excitements new to her on landing and a French train to climb into. Then she beheld the lovely Normandy land. She whirled through it in the hard-seated truck of a railway carriage; but the outlook from it was the same to her as to the occupant of a Pullman car: being a philosopher she told herself this and rejoiced to think of the small sum she had paid for it. Paris, which she observed for the first time, and only drove across on her way from the Gare St. Lazare to the Gare du Nord, she promptly characterized as a fine city, but stuffy, "though the streets are much better kept than ours," she allowed as an extenuating circumstance. She felt quite impatient to get to Lausanne, where she determined to make her first stop, chiefly because she had read her Byron, "and loved him." "Childe Harold" she considered "a grand thing," and no one, she maintained, who had read "The Prisoner of Chillon" could ever forget it; she remembered hearing that it had been written at Lausanne, and that the room Byron had occupied was still to be seen. Unfortunately, she went to a wrong hotel; it was insufferably hot, and there were two black beetles in the corridor-she would have preferred snakes so she fled onward by the morning steamer. She got off it at Clarens, remembering that Byron had been there, too -so had Rousseau. She was a little vague about Rousseau. He had written "Confessions," she knew-of what she was uncertain and she had an idea that his life had not been altogether to his credit; but after she had seen Clarens she would find out all about him.

She deposited her luggage, which con

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He wondered if she had taken offence.-Page 230.

sisted of a pilgrim basket and a hold-all, at a little restaurant next the landing stage, and went for a walk. For a moment she felt adrift and in doubt as to which way to go. "I suppose one always does," she thought, "but all the same, it's splendid to be alone; no one to worry, and you do as you like." With a touch of superiority she turned away from the dusty road to right and left of her, from the villas and the signs of tourist life and prosperity, and went toward the country at the foot of the great mountains. She adored them already, and walked a little way upward through the vineyards, which she considered distinctly disappointing "stumpy little bushes, not so picturesque as gooseberries, a hop garden is twice as good"--but the scenery enchanted her. She stopped again and again to look back at the lake and the Dent du Midi, or to sit down on the low stone walls and watch the lizards run about in the sunshine, while she thought how splendid it was, and how wise she had been to come. But raptures are hard to maintain long when you have no definite point to reach and the sun is high in August. "Never felt

anything like it in my life," she gasped, and at noon when, tired and dusty, she returned to the restaurant, a vague wonder unconsciously began to take hold of her as to how she was going to map out her holiday so

as to make it a

success.

II

THE restaurant was deserted, the dining-room hot and stuffy, and the waiter half asleep; but there was a wide balcony overhanging the lake; a red and whitesun-blind made it shady, and many little whitecovered tables were suggestive. She went to one next the balustrade, so as to

look down into the clear cool water, and asked for something to

eat.

While she was waiting a tall man entered, he was four and thirty, perhaps, fair and loosely jointed, good looking on the whole, and had a leisurely way that was attractive.

too young and too hungry not to enjoy it; but there was more imagination in his repast. She might at least have thought of an omelette she told herself when she saw his, looking extremely good and of a deli

One of the curates cast longing glances at her.-Page 231.

With an air of not seeing her he took the next table, as being nearest the lake, perhaps; for there was no one else in the place. The waiter ambled toward him; and in excellent French-for which she envied him, her own was vile the stranger ordered an omelette, some fish, and a green artichoke. He knew what he was about, she thought, and felt a little resentful at the steak and fried potatoes which had been set before her. It was good enough; she was

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color, not two yards away from her.

He and she progressed with their separate luncheons in silence. Except for the soft plash of the water and the occasional dip of an oar the noonday hush was on the lake; but for the coming and going of the waiter, it seemed to have fallen on the little restaurant, too. It emphasized the fact that she was not absolutely alone; but when her sleeve caught a fork and sent it to the ground with a clatter, the stranger might have been deaf and blind. She wondered why he didn't look at her - just once. man was a fool to sit in the same room with a woman and not to

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do that. Of course, no one expected him to speak, but a cat might look at a king. After all, too, she wasn't a fright; she wore a string-colored tussore silk which hung in soft folds and a straw hat with a blue ribbon round it; she knew quite well that she made an agreeable picture.

So did the fair man, for he was not a fool; but he happened to be a gentlemanrather more of one than Edith's accountant young man, for instance.

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