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Newspaper Page Text
BERTHA'S CANDLESTICK By Mary Parrish (Copyright, 1917, W. G. Chapman.) Old Mrs. Townsend was "undenia bly eccentric. Everybody in Centre ville said so. And where there is so much smoke there must be some fire. The old lady lived alone with one servant in a red brick house at the edge of the town. She was not known to be rich,. just "comfortably off." Her four nieces made occasion al visits and were sometimes invited together to teas or dinners. Two of them, Bertha Townsend and Sybil Wells, were orphans, and the only daughters of a brother and sister of Mrs. Townsend. The other two, Mary and Adele Fancher, were chil dren of a sister living in the same town. In the scale of worldly possessions Bertha had rather the least of any of them. At the age of 19 she was still working in the millinery "parlor" of Mme. Louise, or rather in the back room, trimming the "latest importa tions," where she had been for three years. Sybil Wells, a year or two older, was teaching in the academy and the other two girls were away at a fashionable schooL Bertha seemed to be the favorite of her Aunt Townsend, and people wondered why she did not take her into her home instead of allowing the girl to live in a boarding. house. But once, when a neighbor suggest ed it, she gave such an emphatic ex position of "her reasons that, the neighbor being something of a gos sip, no one had again attempted to mention the subject. , Was she to have her mode of life all upset, her times for meditation broken up and chaos let loose in her home? Not while she lived and was a free agent. So people laughed, frowned, sniffed or agreed that she had a right to do as she pleased ac cording to their several natures. Meanwhile Bertha was happy in her boarding house, which gave her more freedom to see and entertain her small circle of friends than her aunt's home would have been likely to afford. She had a joyous temper ament, and a fine sense of humor, and the talent for telling a good story, which made her a welcome f guest where jealousy did not abide. Her Aunt Fancher, whose superior social position precluded anything like jealousy, and who regarded Ber tha as the "poor relation," invited Sometimes She Lighted the Candle. her on legal holidays, when families are expected to dine together, but did not always think of her on other fes tive occasions. " v It was at a Christmas dinner when the girls were home for the holidays that Bertha met Murray Powers. He had been traveling in Europe with his mother after his college gradua tion some two years before. His strong, wholesome face and bright talk, together with a certain fineness