GERTRUDE'S FLITTING

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1618, 4 March 1903, Page 8

GERTRUDE'S FLITTING

“I have been independent too long to run well in double harness now,” said the woman.

There was decision in her tone, and the man knew her too well to suppose that she was coquetting. Yet Gertrude Stockman couid at times be fascinatingly womanly and yielding; more than once had she shown by look or word that Alee Jamieson’s love found an echo in her breast. Since their school days they had been friends, but till a few months ago Alec’s income had been only sufficient to keep himself, and so he had refrained from any definite proposal. But a recent .rise in his salary and Gertrude’s avowed intention of starting housekeeping on her own account brought about an abrupt offer of marriage, which she emphatically declined in the words just quoted. “But don’t you see how lonely you’ll be?” ho queried. “You’ve never been accustomed to stay by yourself, and there’s not much chance of your brothers settling down in Glasgow, again, now they’ve been so long abroad.”

“I do not expect them to, and I’m net going to stay alone. I have taken a pretty semi-detached cottage at Langside ; it has five rooms. I shall furnish the two downstairs, and let the upstairs ones to a couple of business girls. There are lets of women, with some furniture of their own, who would ever so much rather get empty rooms like that than stay in lodgings.” “It’s preposterous,” said the man gruffly, “when you know quite well how much I need you.”

There was something rather pathetic in his frank avowal, in the absence of all the flattering words calculated to make a woman yield, But Gertrude, whose thirtieth birthday was a past event, and her outlook on life more practical than sentimental, merely replied— , “I like you to come and see me,_ you know, and hope you will sometimes ccnie of a Sunday to Willow Cottage, 10 Lime Road. “Sixteen Lime Tinarl ? To he sore X

will!” and with a laugh which Gertrude thought decidedly out of place he left the house. “Not a bit as if bis heart were broken,” as she confided to her pillow that night, an inconsistent lump rising in her throat. > * * # * »

The business of removal, never without its worries, was to Gertrude all-ab-sorbing. Her new house was quite recently built, and by the middle of May not out of the wokmeirs hands. But she had chosen exactly how all the rooms were to be done; the painters had finished her pretty little hall and the parlour, in tho grate of which - a cheery nro crackled, and now they were papering the bedroom.

“You’ro sure to be done with this room to-morrow?” she queried, looking in upon them in the afternoon, a busi-ness-like figure in liolland overall, her sleeves rolled up and her petticoats economically kilted. The workman replied laconically, and muttered a wish that women would mind their own business.

Gertrude, however, did not hear his imprecation, and ran off well pleased with the progress of her new home. In tlio kitchen she began scrubbing up diligently, for her funds were too low to allow of her hiring any service not actually necessary, and,, essentially a domestic woman, she enjoyed herself thoroughly at any branch of housework. So she scrubbed, and, as she worked, hummed a lively tune, planning the while how she would arrange her furniture. With the lively fancy of her sex, she saw exactly how the parlour would look once she got all the furniture in.

“The big arm-chair with the ears,” she thought, “must go in the cosy corner at the fireplace, and my basketchair will stand at the other side beside the octagonal table.” So she mused, and, in her calculations, it is just possible she may have remembered Somebody’s fondness for the grandfather chair with the ears; anyhow she was so determined that it should be placed exactly to her taste that she' there and then ran through the lobby into the narlour and set about arranging that sanctum after her mental picture.

And then a strange thing happened. The workmen coming and going, and only the one room being furnished, Gertrude had not thought it necessary to shut the front door, and wffien she heard a heavy footfall in the lobby she did not worry, supposing it merely to be that of one of the painters. But all of a sudden she was arrested in the act of polishing up the copper fireirons by hearing a strangely familiar voice addressing somebody in a loud and angry tone. “What do you mean,” said the- voice, “by papering this room with that pink paper ? I gave you no orders to that effect, and where did that gas stove come from?” The sullen voice of the painter was understood to reply that he took his orders from the mistress, and -

“Since you’ve got so far, go on; I’ll see you later,” was the brusque response oif the familiar voice. Then the bedroom door slammed, and the footstecs came towards the room in which

Gertrude now stood with won Id-bo dignity and little curiosity. “What’s the Why, you here, Gertie!” said a voice at her elbow, and she turned with a start. Of course siie had known it was Alec, hut that he should have tho audacity to address her thus, and in her own house, was too much for her self-possession.

“What do you mean?” she queried, angrily, “coming to my house and interfering with my orders? What right bavo you. to object to pink papers?” She was very angry, hut Alec, instead of looking alarmed or ashamed, mere [ 7 said—

“By Jove! Gertie, you look stunning in that pinafore business!” That does not answer my question,” she replied, shortly, but mere calmly. “About my house?” asked he.

“Your house, indeed! JNo—mine ” “But my dear girl,” said he, “this is not your house, it’s mine,” and he dreiV a letter from his pocket and handed it to her.

Sho read it once —and then again. Sure enough, according to the note, which was from the landlord, and not merely from the factor, and was, moreover dated February, while she had not taken the house till April, 1G Lime Road belonged to Alec Jamieson for the next twelve months. Sho looked searchingly at the letter, and then, somewhat piteously, at the man before her.

“And where is my house? I—you surely won’t insist on keeping this one ?”

“Did you sign a missive?” “I didn’t get one. I thought it was all right if 1 just said I’d take the house. I took it in the beginning of April.”

“And I,” said the man, “took It in February. .... I say, Gertie, you haven’t booked these wretched girls yet, have you?” She shook her head. “And I’m hanged if you do? I say, little woman, suppose we go and give the painters orders about the upstairs

rooms now ?”

Gertie didn’t even try to look displeased, and Alec looked so ridiculously, boyishly happy at her unbusiness-like mistake and his own diplomacy, that in a burst of affection sbe whispered—- “ You see I brought the chair with the Tugs’—for you?”