Georgina's Service Stars

by Annie F. Johnston

But if she were really engaged to Doctor Wynne, as Judith admitted when I asked her, then she had no business to treat Richard as she did. It wasn't fair to him to lead him on so far and to accept so much from him, and it wasn't fair to Dr. Wynne.

But Judith said, "For the land sakes, Esther wasn't ready to settle down to any one person yet. Besides, Richard was too young for her to take him seriously, and John Wynne was too deadly in earnest for a girl like Esther. He was too intense. He couldn't understand a little butterfly like her whose only thought was to have a good time. She'd be utterly miserable tied for life to a man like him, who put duty ahead of her and her pleasure. It would probably end in her marrying one of the men back home that she'd been engaged to off and on ever since she was fifteen.

She said of course it would make things dreadfully uncomfortable when it came to breaking her engagement with John Wynne, because he was so horribly in earnest that he considered her actually his. It was a mistake to let the affair go so far. When I asked how about Richard, Judith just shrugged her shoulders and said it wasn't to be wondered at that Esther should have a little summer affair with him, such a good-looking boy and so entertaining, with that lovely car at his disposal.

Just then Esther came downstairs in a soft white dress, beaded in crystal, looking like such an angel with the lamplight falling on her amber hair and sweet upturned face, that all my old faith in her came back in a rush. "The loveliest girl in Christendom." No wonder he called her that.

It was then that I first thought, oh, if I could only tell her the story that Miss Crewes told us, of that knightly deed her John Wynne did without any hope of guerdon, she wouldn't want to break tryst with him. But I couldn't tell then. I had given my promise.

The next week-end he came up to Provincetown again. He was to stay all night at the hotel and take Esther down to Chatham next day to a house-party. Some old school friends of hers were giving it. But he went back without her. When she found he had come for her in the same shabby little old automobile that he had last Spring when she was in Barnstable, she refused to go with him. Said she'd be ashamed to have the girls know he drove such an old rattletrap, and that he'd promised her last Spring—at least halfway promised her—that he'd get a new one in time for this house-party, so that he could join them sometimes and take them on picnics.

He explained to her that he had fully intended to do so, but that something came up lately which made it impossible. He wouldn't tell her what, although she coaxed and pouted. He just stuck to it doggedly that it was something he couldn't talk about. Somebody needed his help and he felt forced to give it. Then he grew stern and told her that she must believe him when he said the sacrifice was necessary, and forgive him if he couldn't humor her wishes.

It was Judith who told me about it. She said that Esther has always queened it over everybody, and is so used to being considered first in everything that she wouldn't stand for his putting some old charity patient ahead of her wishes and her comfort. She just gave him his ring back and he went home that night.

I wanted to cry out that I knew the reason. That I could tell her something that should make her proud to be seen in that shabby old machine, because of the gallant sacrifice it stood for. But my lips were sealed by my promise.