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"MA'AM?" BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
ILLUSTRATED BY DOM J. LAVIN
(Copyright by Chas. Scribner's Sons.)
In most affairs, except those which
related to his matrimonial ventures,
Marcus Antonius Saterlee was a pa
tient man. On three occasions "an
adent temperament and the heart
of a dove," as he himself expressed
it, had corraled a wife within his
house. The first had been the love of
his childhood; the-wooing of the sec
ond had lasted but six weeks; that
of the third but three. He rejoiced
in the fact that he had been a good
husband to three good women. He
lamented that all were dead. Now
and then he squirmed his bull head
afound on his bull body, and glanced
across the aisle at the showy woman
who was daintily picking a chicken
wing. Each time he looked he mut
tered: "Flighty. Too slight. Stuck on
herself. Pmhead," etc.
With his food Saterlee was not pa
tient. He dispensed with mastication.
Neither was he patient of other peo
ple's matrimonial ventures. And, in
particular, that contemplated and
threatened by his son and heir was
moving across three hundred miles of
inundated country as fast as a train
could carry him. His son had written:
"Dearest Dad I've found Dorothy
again. She's at Carcasonne. They
thought her lungs were bad, but they
aren't. We're going to be married a
week from today next Friday at
nine a. m. This marriage is going
to take place, daddy dear. You can't
prevent it. I write this so's to be on
the square. I'm inviting you to the
wedding. I'll be hurt if you don't
show up. What if Dorothy's mother
is an actress and has been divorced
twice? You've been a marrying man
yourself. Dad, Dorothy is all darling
from head to foot But I love you,
too, daddy, and if you can't see it
my way, why, God bless and keep
vou just the same. Jim."
I can't deny that Marcus Antonius
Saterlee was touched by his son's
epistle. But he was not moved out
of reason.
"The girl's mother," he said to him
self, "is a painted, divorced jade."
And he thought with pleasure of the
faith, patience and rectitude of the
three gentle companions whom he
had successively married and buried.
"There was never any divorce in the
Saterlee blood," he had prided him
self. "Man or woman, we stick by
our choice till he or she turns up
his or her toes. Not till then do we
think of anybody-'else. But then tto
do, because it is not good to live alone
especialy in a small community in
Southern California."
He glanced once more at the
showy lady across the aisle. She had
finished her chicken wing, and was
dipping her fingers in a finger-bowl,
thus displaying to sparkling advan
tage a number of handsome rings.
"My boy's girl's mother a painted
actress," he muttered as he looked.
"Not if I know it." And then he mut
tered: "You'd look like an actress if
you was painted."
Though the words cannot have
been distinguished, the sounds were
audible.
"Sir?" said the lady, stiffly but
courteously.
"Nothing, ma'am," muttered Mark,
Anthony, much abashed. "I'm sur
prised to see so much water in this
arid corner of the world, where I have
often suffered for want of it. I must (
have been talking to myself to that
effect."
The lady looked out of the win
dow not her's, but Saterlee's.
"It does look," she said, "as if the
waters had divorced themselves from
the bed of the ocean. I suppose," she
continued, "we may attribute those
constant and tedious delays to which
we have been subjected all day to the'
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