The Clio Messenger

IT WAS A SURPRISE
By Allie Clayton.

The daughter of the household, aged eleven, looked up from her book as the man caller came into the library.

"How do you do, Mr. Dearmore," she said, getting up politely. "You might as well take a comfortable chair because sister won't be down for ages.

She is always slow about getting dressed and I suppose now she'll be slower than ever because she won't care if she does keep you waiting."

"Well, why shouldn't she care, I'd like to know?" inquired the caller with an assumption of surprise designed to be comic.

The young person hitched a little closer to him in her eagerness. "I just found out!" she told him, "tonight. I guess they weren't going to tell me, but sister was so interested in brushing out her switch that she didn't notice me and mother said: 'You might have done better if you'd more ambition, but, thank heaven, you're engaged at last!' And sister said yes, it was time and she'd have to make the best of it. Why, she's engaged! Don't you understand?"

"You surprise me," said the caller with interest.

The young person nodded her head. "It's awfully exciting to have an engaged person in the family. We never had one before. I held my hand over my mouth to keep from asking right out who it was, but I knew if I spoke they'd make me go away-and then all they said was that where the trousseau was coming from if dad didn't make a killing goodness only knew. What's a trousseau?"

"A sort of feminine delirium, I believe," the young man told her.

"Wouldn't you like to read out loud to me from your book?"

"Not when I can talk," the young person assured him, promptly. "I'd think it was Bob Samson, only he hasn't been here for ages. He's riding around a ranch out West now and he always brought me chocolates and petted the dog and waited hours and hours for sister. Mother told her one day for goodness' sake when she got her hands on that huge old Samson house to burn it down and put up another one with a French gray drawing room, and other things, but I guess Bob slipped a cog somehow—"

"Er—what?"

"Well, Aunt Clara said to mother that a cog in the wheels must have slipped somehow and how did he ever get away and wasn't it a pity! So I suppose Bob did it. I always liked his chocolates—he brought me just as good ones as he brought sister. Sometimes they try to pass off cheap candy on me, but I know! Then I feed it to the dog.

"I'm glad it wasn't that Siddens man. He always called me 'little one' and patted my head and he had bronchitis and always coughed before he spoke, and sister said she didn't care if he was rich, but she couldn't endure a man who wore brown ties and ate grapefruit with a fork and anyhow he gave her the shivers. That was the time mother scolded so and sister went to Aunt Clara's for a month.

"I'm surprised at her getting engaged, because she'll have to have a house and meals then and she says picking out things to eat is simply awful and she wouldn't wear her life away keeping down the grocery bills for any man and he might as well make up his mind to it. Anyhow, sister never loses her head, because mother says so, and she'll make him toe the mark. Mother says that with her sweet smile sister could make a man believe white was black, but that seems foolish. Wouldn't you know black if you saw it?"

"I used to think I was able to distinguish colors," admitted the caller.

"But you're different," said the young person. "It isn't as though you were one of sister's trailers—that's what dad calls 'em. It doesn't make any difference to you. Only I thought if I told you about it you'd understand why she didn't hurry to get down here, now she's interested in one particular man."

"Well," said the caller, "I'll tell you a secret. I'm the particular man!"

The young person's eyes bulged. "Honest?" she squealed. "Why, I was never so surprised in my life! And you never petted the dog once! My, but you're quiet!"