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She gave us chairs and she talked. Little Roscoe Potts writhed near by upon an ottoman and betrayed that he, too, could talk when circumstances were kindly. The detail of their personalities, salient in that first moment, was that Heaven had denied them both the gift of reticence. "Yes I've been telling Mr. Denney I feel that there is a work here for me," she began briskly.
Most formally I offered her a chair by the card-table, and resumed my own chair with what I meant for an air of inhospitable abstraction. She declined the chair, preferring to stand by the table as was her custom. "It was on this spot years ago," I said, laying down the second eight cards, "that Solon Denney first told me he was about to marry." Discursive gossip seemed best, I thought.
"Say," said Billy, stung to admiration by this flow of the right sort of talk, "Mr. Denney, did you ever read 'Little Rosebud, or is Beauty a Curse to a Poor Girl? That sounded just like the detective in that you remember where he's talkin' to Clarence Armytage just after he's overheard the old lawyer tell Mark Vinton, the villain, 'If this child lives, you are a beggar! Remember that?"
Instead of this, those wondrous tassels now danced from her boot tops as she gave chase to Solon Denney, who had pulled one of the scarlet bows from its yellow braid. Grimly I was aware that he should be the first to go out of the world, and I called upon a just heaven to slay him as he fled with his trophy. But nothing sweet and fitting happened. He went unblasted.
I heard the soft quick tread of a hospital steward, and standing before me, he took from its envelope the letter Solon Denney had sent me to say that she was dead. I handed it back, told him to burn it, and I shut my eyes to the sickening shapes of life. My fever came up again, and in the night I felt inch by inch over ground wet with blood for a picture I had relinquished in a Quixotic moment.
Had the letters been upon Potts when he went down? Had they been saved? Were they legible? And would he use them? It was decided that Solon Denney should try to illuminate this point before taking the candidacy of Potts seriously. In the next issue of the Argus, therefore, was this paragraph, meant to be provocative: =God's providence has been said to watch over fools and drunkards.
I stood in my garden that evening, charmed by the wild, sweet, gusty-gentle music of the spring night. Northward, in the gathering dusk, came a solitary figure walking rapidly a slight, nervous figure, a soft hat drawn well over the face, the skirts of its coat streaming to the breeze. As it passed me, I recognized Solon Denney.
Other speakers were Mayor Jesse M. Littleton, L. P. Barnes, Attorney J. J. Lynch, the Reverends Charles H. Myers, L. R. Robinson and Dr. Daniel E. Bushnell. The State Federation of Women's Clubs in convention at Pulaski voted down a suffrage resolution, though the president, Mrs. George W. Denney, favored it.
"I felt it strongly when I perused the columns of the newspaper which Mr. Denney was thoughtful enough to send me." Solon's eyes uneasily sought the cabbage-like flowers in the faded carpet of the room. "And I feel it more strongly now that I have ventured among you," continued the lady, glowing upon us both.
A wise old man I believe he was a bishop once said he knew "that outside the real world is a world of fine fabling." I had stolen a day from that world. Now I hurried through the gloom of the hall, past the poor striving hands, to sit with Solon Denney and tell him of a peculiar thing I had observed during the afternoon's walk.
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