None but could smile upon the spinster and be glad of the little tale she told. Half the world knows of the pigeons so nourished on one of the most crowded corners in the heart of a great, turbulent city, but none had thought before of what might accompany this exhibition of the fact that there is still a regard for beings of the lower and less grasping life. Very pleasant was the conversation and very understanding were the comments, but the Colonel, like many a commander of the past, from Joshua down, noted the swift passing of the hours of day and was insatiate for more of what might be attained before it was too late. He called upon the Banker. That gentleman, easy, suave and really a good specimen of the class which inclines us to save by taking care of our savings—and only rarely departing with them—was quite equal to the demand at the paying-teller's window. "I have listened," he said, "to these accounts, some of adventure, some of fancy, some of love and persistence, and it has occurred to me that even I might contribute something to the general fund. Oddly enough, as coming from me, what I shall tell is a story of love and courage and persistence all combined. It is not a tale of some far country, but one of our modern life, a tale of true lovers whose union was opposed but who came together at last in spite of obstacles. I think we may term it
ABERCROMBIE'S WOOING
Mr. Gentil Abercrombie is a fine fellow, quick-witted, and amiable, with prospects in the world, but he is not, as yet, wealthy. Last spring he fell in love with Miss Frances Dobson, and the young lady seemed not entirely oblivious of the fact nor altogether displeased with it. The affair appeared prosperous to the hopeful Abercrombie until the middle of June, when the Dobson family moved to their country home at a modest little watering place not far from the city, leaving the suitor in a position he did not like. A resolute gentleman, though, is Mr. Abercrombie, and he followed his star, taking apartments at the watering-place hotel, coming into town by train daily and returning in the evening.
The young lady thus sought had the fortune to be the only daughter of her somewhat austere parents, Mr. James Dobson and Mrs. Irene Dobson, each distinctly of the class not to be trifled with by any too aspiring suitor. Abercrombie was admitted to the Dobson residence, for he has good social standing—but his reception was not as warm as the weather. It appeared to each of the lovers early in the season that it was best to be politic, and that Abercrombie was not, as yet, looked upon by the father and mother as a person with that superabundance of worldly goods and of stability of character and wisdom which should appertain to the husband of the Family Pride. Hence it came that Abercrombie made an effort whenever an opportunity offered to become what he remarked to himself as "solid with the old folks." Hence it came, too, that at a certain trying time there arrived in his immediate vicinity a certain quantity and quality of disaster.
It chanced that on one occasion, Abercrombie, seeking, as usual, to ingratiate himself with the parents, drifted into a discussion concerning the bringing up of children and expressed himself to the effect that, in place of the usual inane though amusing fairy stories and things of that sort, children should in their youth, when the memory fairly petrifies things, be entertained with pleasant tales about natural history and in fact about anything likely to aid most in future equipment for the great struggle in the world. Of natural history he made a point. Well, one evening, in just what poets call the "gloaming," Abercrombie, the parents, Frances and young Erastus Dobson were sitting together upon the front porch, when, suddenly, from some inscrutable impulse, Erastus broke out with the exclamation:
"Mr. Abercrombie, tell me a story."
Here was a situation! It flashed upon Abercrombie, that he had, as already mentioned, impressed upon the elder people the fact that, in his opinion, the youthful mind should be loaded with natural history when tales were imposed upon it. There was no alternative. Here were the older people listening and expectant. Here was Erastus, vociferous. Here was his own sweetheart, sitting in the half darkness and wondering if he were equal to the occasion!
Abercrombie quivered for a moment trying to collect his senses which seemed to have been, somehow, "jolted" by Erastus' request, and then suddenly became so desperate and cold-blooded that he could not understand himself.
"Yes, Erastus," he said, affably; "I will tell you a story, most willingly." Then he continued:
"This is the story of the Boy and the Bull and the Horned Hen. Once there was a boy. It has frequently happened that there was a boy, so that it is hardly worth while referring to such a thing now, but, since we have mentioned it, we'll let it go. Tum-a-row! This boy lived in the country and was kind to a Hen. Little did he know that the hen appreciated and remembered it, but she did! One day this boy started to cross a meadow in which was a savage bull, and the boy forgot he had on his red sweater. In the middle of the meadow stood a tree which was blasted and which looked almost like a cone. It was what a young kindergarten teacher might describe as a trunk from which the branches had been riven away in some of Nature's convulsions, probably electric. Anyhow, the bull started for the boy and the boy started for the tree. Tum-a-row! The boy reached the tree four and one-third seconds before the bull reached the same place, and the boy began climbing and was at least thirty feet from the ground before the bull arrived. It is needless to say that the boy climbed with much rapidity. The bull followed rapaciously—yes, that's the word—and began climbing also with great rapidity behind the boy, and there was a race to what—if the term may be applied to such a dead trunk of a tree—to the topmast. There the tree sloped to a point, which the boy, climbing with avidity—that's the word,—reached easily, under the stress of circumstances. The bull, climbing swiftly after, attained a height of between ten and fifteen feet from his intended victim, and then, reaching the slope of compression, as one may say, of the dead tree, suddenly found himself without sufficient grasp and slid down, again and again, as he sought to reach the apex of the cone. The boy, meanwhile, was and properly, too, in a state of utmost fear, as the bull from time to time seemed almost successful in his upward attempts.