A TEMPORARY GODDESS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3711, 21 December 1912, Page 17

A TEMPORARY GODDESS.

(By Carrol H. Pierce.)

I awoke one day in a new room and didn't know where' I was. I lay on

an iron cot, the floor was stone, and stone cold at that, with not a decoration on tho wall, even a calendar. But there was somebody sitting at a table in the corner writing something down on a piece of paper. My first vision of it was little bits of blue and white lines running up and down, but these soon resolved themselves into a nurse’s uniform dress. She turned, saw mo looking at her, and, rising, advanced toward me.

“Where am I and who are you?” I asked.

“Don’t disturb yourself. You have met with an accident and have been brought to a hospital.” I attempted to draw up one of my legs, but concluded to let it alone. There were other things I could do I liked better. It turned out that I had been running an auto at express train speed, a tire had burst, and I had done a sky rocket act, lighting on the ground some distance from the road.

I was a week in that hospital, attended by that same nurse, seeing no one else except the doctor, before I began to get straightened out. Now, ] defy a man to be shut up with one woman for any length of time, be she homely as a hedge fence, without the pangs of love growing up in his heart. As the physical pangs grew less the love pangs grew greater, till at last I could stand it no longer I must 'speak. She came to me one morning with a thermometer in her hand to take my temperature, but first felt my wrist. Those soft fingers were too much for mo.

“I wish to say to you,” I broke out, “that you’re the loveliest creature on the facie of the globe. Your eyes are heaven’s windows, through which an angel peers; your skin is alabaster. your lips are budding roses, your ” “Let me see your tongue?”

I didn’t like "the shut off, but during my confinement I bad got used to being bossed and I obeyed instantly. She pushed the thermometer into my mouth, and speech was out of the question. She couldn’t leave the thermometer there forever, and when she took it out* and wrote’ something down on her ruled blank I opened fire again, or, rather, I Avent on from where I’d left ofF. “Your hair is of , gold; your cheeks are a pair of roses; yoAir teeth are pearls; your figure is that of a Venus; you are inconceivably beautiful.”

This time she let me go on till I had exhausted the catalogue of her charms, Avhen she said quietly: '“Would you like chops or steak for your dinner or i slice of roast beef? The doctors say you may have what you wish.” * “That means that I’m near a time

will wonder what induced you to think ino beautiful. Did you ever write something you thought was a stroke of genius and take it up after you had cooled, to discover that you had done a job you were ashamed of? Well, if you come back here to see me that is the way you will feel.” “Not at all. I’ll consider you what you are, beautiful.” “Youfll do no such thing. You’ll see me as I am, anything but beautiful, even homely.” “I won’t. I’ll clinch it now.-Be my wife. - ” “I’ll bet you the price of a sealskin coat you do.”

“Do what?” “Find out your mistake.” “I take the bet.” “Very well; ’tis a go. Xou pay the bet or marry me.” “Done!”

I left the hospital a wleek after that, and as soon as I got outside and rode along the streets where many women, some of them pretty, "were shopping, I began to feel a reaction. When a month had gone by and my leg and my head and my heart had got righted I knew I didn’t wish to marry my nurse or any other woman. I would not go to see her, for if I did I would have either to admit that she was unattractive or make her my wife. Instead. I sent her the handsomest sealskin clonic I could buy and wrote her a not© saving that marriage was impossible with me, so there would be no use for me to see her. Later a woman with my sealskin on bowed to me on the street. I wondered who she was. Then it dawned upon me that she was my former I nurse. She was a 1 perfect scarecrow.