Jewel Weed

								

going to give you my very uncomfortable seat on this bench and let you
and Madeline talk over old times, and new times which are to be still
better. Perhaps Mr. Norris will go about with me and meet some of the
people--beard the western prairie-dog in his den, so to speak."
"Now that is really good of you, Mrs. Lenox. You know this is the first
time Madeline and I have come together since we got through college and
have been recognized as grown up. In fact, I'm not used to her in long
dresses yet."
He glanced at the smiling girl as Mrs. Lenox nodded and turned.
"How lovely Miss Elton is!" exclaimed Norris as they moved away
together. "Of course I've seen her picture in Dick's room, but it did
not do her justice."
"Lovely, indeed!" Mrs. Lenox answered heartily. "You have chosen the one
word to be applied to Madeline Elton, both to her spirit and to her
face--not thrilling, perhaps, but satisfying, which is better. She and
Dick were inseparables through their childhood. It is rather a
taken-for-granted affair, you know."
"I guessed as much, though Dick never said anything."
There was something so confidential and kindly in her manner that Norris
forgot his awkwardness and felt moved to confidence in return.
"Dick was born to all good things," he went on. "I sometimes wonder how
that feels." Then, seeing that she glanced at him inquiringly: "Dick
always seems to me one who needs only to stand still, and Fortuna takes
pains to hunt him up and offer him her choicest wares. Life looks to him
more like a birthday party than like a battle-field. I say it not in
envy, but with the awe of one who has had to scrabble and who sees
endless scrabbling ahead. But I believe part of the charm that I feel
about Dick is his manifest predestination to good luck."
"One piece of his luck, if I am not mistaken, is in your coming here.
There is no friend like a college friend for every-day wear," she
answered kindly.
"Well, I owe my position here to him," Norris went on. "When he found
that I had an uncle back in Connecticut who owned a share in the St.
Etienne Star, he began to pull wires both at that end and this to get
me a place on the editorial staff. I'm afraid that nothing but wires
would have got it for me. So here I am making my first bow to society
under the shadow of his cloak."
"Of course you came here."
"What, really, is Mr. Early?"
"Apostle, expounder of the universe, business man, prophet."
Norris laughed.
"He's our display window. The way in which he manages to keep a little
lion always roaring on the bargain-table astonishes us all every day.
And when he runs short of foreign lions he roars a bit himself.
Privately, I think he's more entertaining than the imported article. St.
Etienne would be merely a western city without him.
"Now," she went on, "I'm going to introduce you to some other girls. To
me, as to Dick, Miss Elton may be the bright particular star, but she is