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Newspaper Page Text
nfumwrnmrnmmmm vmew'Mw "If you please, let me take a seat in the shadow here," prettily pleaded the young girL "I have a headache from hurrying so. The light hurts my eyes, too." "Why certainly, answered Roy, as he turned a seat and sat down oppo site her, laying aside his light over coat and hat. "Dear! I am quite chilly!" shivered his companion. "It will pass away If I can rest for a little. May I?" and as he nodded promptly she took up his overcoat and wrapped it about her. Then she asked him to place her hat in the rack overhead. When he had done this he was surprised to see that she had appropriated his own broad-brimmed hat. "It shades my poor, suffering eyes so splendidly," she explained, look ing for all the world like some pretty boy as she snuggled into the corner of the seat, "Well, she is an original!" com mented Roy, a little wonderingly. He passed the tickets to t&e con ductor as he came along. That of ficial was accompanie'd by two men. They looked like detectives. They scanned the various passengers sharply. "Well," remarked one of them, as he reached, the end of the coach, "she's not aboard this train. We'll get off at the junction and wait for the next one." , Abruptly, as the train left the junc tion, Roy's companion magically awoke from invalid lethargy to the utmost animation and 'talkativeness. She pronounced her headache and pained eyes gone. She dazzled him with smiles, chatting and laughing. She accepted his flowers with a grateful look that thrilled him. She took to the candy like some bright schoolgirl. She charmed, she en thralled. "Sister Nettie will be so glad to see you," he had said. " "Dear Sister Nettie!" murmured his companion, and Roy eyed her strangely as he detected the faintest undertone chuckle in the utterance. When he told her of the profession for which he had recently qualified,' that of a lawyer, she betrayed so great an interest in the same that he was puzzled. They reached Milburn as well ac quainted as if they had been close friends for years. She grew sud denly serious as they left the train, and hesitated as he led her to the car riage in waiting. "Had I not better that is per haps I had better not see your sis ter until tomorrow," she stammered vaguely. "Why, Nettle is expecting you!" replied Roy, fairly astounded and mystified at the strange remarks. "My dear Irene!" cried Mrs. Doug las, ready to rush into the arms of her visitor as she was ushered into the house by Roy. Then she paused. "Why, who is this?" she asked vaguely. Her guest sat down in the nearest chair. Her bonny face grew pale. She controlled herself in a moment or two. She arose to her feet. All the animation and fun was gone from her sunny face. "I am an impostor!" she sobbed. "I hope you good people will forgive me, but I had to do it to to escape." "To escape what?" projected the perplexed Roy. It was a brief but an interesting story. It told of a wicked tyrant, of a guardian, of a plot to defraud her of a fortune. She was Violet Hayes. She had been accepted as Miss Net tleton by Roy and it enabled her to escape emissaries of her uncle look ing for her. "You see," she said, with a be witching look of appeal at Roy, "you are a lawyer and I have a lot of pa pers to be looked over, and so " "You poor, homeless dear!" ex claimed Mrs. Douglas, and she took theorphan and stranger into her lov ing arms. "But what can have be come of Irene?" Irene had eloped with a young man. ..u-,LOTi.