Part 1 (1/2)
North of Fifty-Three
by Bertrand W Sinclair
CHAPTER I
WHICH INTRODUCES A LADY AND TWO GENTLEMEN
Dressed in a plain white shi+rt waist and an equally plain black cloth skirt, Miss Hazel Weir, on week days, was ton & Bush, iarb would a casual glance have differentiated her from the other feht have noticed that she was a bit younger than the others, possessed of a clear skin and large eyes that seeray--eyes,application to clerical work A business office is no place for a woman to parade her personal charms The measure of her worth there is siers So that if any irl Miss Hazel Weir ht be, he would probably have replied--and with utrapher
But when Saturday evening released Miss Hazel Weir fro, she beca clothes at seven A M Monday , quite a different sort of a person In other words, she chucked the plain shi+rt waist and the plain skirt into the discard, got into such a dress as a norhts to put on, and devoted a half hour or so to ”doing” her hair
Which naturally effected a more or less complete transformation, a transformation that was subjective as well as purely objective For Miss Weir then became an entity at which few persons of either sex failed to take a second glance
Upon a certain Saturday night Miss Weir ca ate
”I'll be here at ten sharp,” said he ”And you get a good beauty sleep to-night, Hazel That confounded office! I hate to think of you drudging away at it I ere ready to--”
”Oh, bother the office!” she replied lightly ”I don't think of it out of office hours Anyway, I don't mind It doesn't tire ht, dear”
”Good night, Hazie,” he whispered ”Here's a kiss to drealy, ran along the path, and up the steps, kissed her finger-tips to the lingering figure by the gate, and went in
”Bed,” she soliloquized, ”is the place forto be up and dressed and have that lunch ready by ten o'clock I wish I weren't such a sleepyhead--or else that I weren't a 'pore wurrkin' gurl'”
At which last conceit she laughed softly Because, for a ”pore wurrkin' gurl,” Miss Weir was fairly well content with her lot She had no one dependent on her--a state of affairs which, if it occasionally leads to loneliness, has its corapher a expenses, and even perrown up in Granville
She had her own circle of friends So that she was comfortable, even happy, in the present--and Jack Barrow proposed to settle the problem of her future; with youth's optimism, they two considered it already settled Six , a three-weeks' honeye on the West Side; everybody in Granville who a lived on the West Side Then she would have nothing to do but make the home nest cozy, while Jack kept pace with a real-estate business that was growing beyond his ht wraps over the back of a chair, and, standing before her dresser, took the multitude of pins out of her hair and tumbled it, a cloudy blackthe center of the dresser, in a leaning silver fra at it a , and her landlady's daughter had set a bunch of wild flowers in a jar beside the picture Hazel picked out a daisy and plucked away the petals one by one
”He loves me--he loves me not--he loves me--” Her lips formed the words inaudibly, as countless lips have formed them in love's history, and the last petal fluttered away at ”not”
She smiled
”I wonder if that's an o to bed Good night, Johnny boy”
She kissed her finger-tips to hirimed with a winter's soot, and within fifteen ave the lie, for once, to the saying that a wo on the steps a full ten minutes before Jack Barrow appeared They walked to the corner and caught a car, and in the span of half an hour got off at Granville Park
The city fathers, haone by with lack of municipal funds, had left the two-hundred-acre square of the park pretty much as nature , no atte Ancientin haphazard groves Wherever the greensward nourished, there grew pink-tipped daisies and kindred flowers of the wild It was gutted in the middle with a ravine, the lower end of which, dammed by an earth embankment, formed a lake with the inevitable swans and other water-fowl But, barring the lake and a wide drive that looped and twined through the timber, Granville Park was a bit of the old Ontario woodland, and as such afforded a pleasant place to loaf in the summer months It was full of secluded nooks, dear to the hearts of young couples And upon a Sunday the carriages of the wealthy affected the smooth drive
When Jack Barrow and Hazel had finished their lunch under the trees, in coathered scraps of bread and cake into a paper bag
Barrohispered to her: ”Let's go down and feed the swans I'd just as soon be away from the crowd”