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9r A CASE OF 'NO WEDDING BELLS FOR ME' TAKE 3 FT OR LEAVE IT AS THE CASE MAY BE BY JANE WHITAKER The bell rangf furiously. I heard the landlady running to the door, then a quick patter of feet up the stairs and my best friend bolted into the roonu. "Thank the Lord you're an old maid, Jane," she cried. "Consider the thanks offered," I laughed, "and tell me why I am sup posed to join in a chorus of "No Wedding Bells for Me?" "Don't treat it as a ;joke, Jane, I'm serious. I just had dinner with Fanny Parwell. You remember she married five months ago. You ought to remember because youwere fool enqugh to.give her a present, and-!" "Just a moment," I interrupted. "You know niy sister is engaged to be married, and, as one old maid is enough for any family, I do not want her ideals of matrimonial bliss shattered." ' Sister suggested that she would go to a. nickel show and we waited in "silence untillhe door closed after her. "What ia it, a, sob story?" I asked. "It's a farce, a comedy, a joke," she responded bitterly. "In the last few days, I suppose because it is spring and" I am past thirty I have been looking at men I know and wondering which would treat me most kintfly if I bent to the yok"e, I'm cured now.. "When Fanny invited "nie to dinner I was real joyQUB, I haven't had a home-cooked meal in an age and I naven't seen Fanny since she mar ried. "They have a very cozy home, with 'Love thinketh no evil' mottoes on the wall, and the table was already fixed, with my favorite salad of cu cumbers and lettuce, but Friend Hus band was not In sight. '"Victor is Tate,' Fanny said, with that exasperating superiority newly married people adopt We will wait a while and have, an old-time chat "I did the chatting in a monologue, while Fanny reiterated like a parrot; 1 wonder what keeps Victor; I won der what keeps Victor.' "I was faint with hunger, and I had visions xf over-done meat, soggy potatoes, cold soup, when Fanny sug gested that we better start eating. "It was as I had feared eyen the salad had wilted, and Fanny still kept up the parrQtjStraJn.. "Finally, just as I put a big pieca of tough meat in my mouth and be gan the process of mastication she dropped her fork with a clatter, lean ed across the table and shouted at me: " 'Oh, suppose he has been killed!' "The piece of meat went down my throat whole, and I choked. I stran gled unassisted for about three min utes before I could get my breath or pick up a glass of water, and then I found Fanny was staring sorrowfully into space. " 1 just couldn't live if Victor were dead,' she moaned. "Ob, bosh!" I said with fervor. "A hundred things could have detained him. '"But Jane says a man can go away perfectly well in the- morning and be brought home-dead at night1 "Jane has an imagination," I an swered. I did not want to depreciate your Jane, but I refused to visit a morgue, identify a corpse and walls slowly behind a hearse'just to gratify her fancy, "Besides," I said to Fanny, "you have lived before you met Victor and you'll go right on living after he Is dead." - ! "The deluge came. She buried her face on the tablecloth and sobbed lika a leading lady in a melodramst. "I didn't try to comfort her, I was top disgusted. And just as she wsug amm&Smimmmmimm