Copyright, 1900
By NORMAN L. MUNRO
The Shadow Between Them
(Printed in the United States of America)
THE SHADOW BETWEEN THEM.
CHAPTER I.
“I LOVE HIM WHOEVER HE IS!”
“Fly around there, little Eva, and pack the lunch basket while me an’ the other girls get ready for the hay ride an’ the party. Put in the half o’ thet caramel cake, an’ the thickest punkin pie, a big hunk o’ home-made cheese, a loaf of salt-risen bread, a glass o’ plum jelly, an’ some cucumber pickles. They got to find room in the hay wagon for that basket o’ pervisions, even if they do have to pack themselves like sardines, for I beant going to starve on a Hallowe’en party till after midnight!”
This was the rather long-winded pronunciamento of Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter, spinster, as she flounced around and snatched a hot flatiron from the top of the big stove, then turned back to the board where she was ironing handkerchiefs and piles of white ruffled lingerie.
The scene was in the clean, roomy kitchen of a West Virginia farmhouse up in the oil regions, where fortunes were made and lost in a day in rash speculations almost as quickly as in Wall Street.
The roomy old farmhouse was going fast to ruin for lack of means to repair it, for the thirty-acre farm was rocky and sterile, and only afforded a support to its owner by reason of being within the famous oil belt. He eked out a frugal subsistence by leasing part of the ground to the oil men, who were numerous in that section, reaping rich rewards from their speculations.