THE DOMINANT SEX.

Otago Witness, Issue 3035, 15 May 1912, Page 82

THE DOMINANT SEX.

(By Edward Boltwood.)

The girl shook her pretty head with marked vigour. " Then it's 'no ' again, is tt?" observed the young man. "All right! I don't care!" " Well, of all the silly ways to take it!" she jeered, raising contemptuous eyebrows. "How would you take it yourself?" he retorted indignantly. " How would you take it yourself if a most illogical person, for the seventh time, had refused to many you? You'd jump off this pier among the jellyfish, I suppose, or do some other inspired thing." ".Anyhow, I wouldn't say that I didn't care I" " My reason for saying that is childishly simple," he explained. "You see, I'm so positive that I'll be firing the same .question at you to morrow, or next week, or next" year —whenever i get the chance — that past refusals don't bother me. I'm looking forward, not backward. ' That's the sort of progressive your Uncle Dudley is!" She peeled a large sliver from tihe stringpiece of the Cape Uod wharf cm which they were sitting, and dropped it toward the' sunlit water. It fell, however, on the toe of her dainty suede shoe. He watched with deep interest her vain efforts to dislodge it, and finally poked it off with his cane. "You, progressive!" mocked the girl. "Why not, by George?" said he. " Didn't I subscribe to that Swedish woman's what's-its-name league last winter when you. asked me? Didn't I go with you to her mop-haired lecture at Cooper Union? Fine business, if I don't get credit for that!" . '"But you never really do anything!" she emphasised. " Oh, you needn't tell me about your tiresome law office! You may know a lot of law, but you don't know the real things, or do them." " I don't know how to propose, for instance." " Decidedly not," she asserted. " I thought I did this time," he said in a humble voice. 'I rehearsed this proposal all last night in the sleeping-car. A drummer in the next bunk was quite peevish about it. But I'm wise to what the trouble is. You're drawing magazine illustrations for another novel by that Chicago chap!" "No, I'm painting a picture. It's called 'Sunset from the Mill.' Voila!" With her crimson parasol she pointed at the grey tower of an ancient and solitary windmill across the broad harbour. " For another novel by the Chicago chap," he reiterated firmly. " r&u're daffy about the masterful type of man, with the salient jaw that sticks out over the building-line, and hands that need a Kh avc _the primeval crook who gets a wife any old way, so that he gets her. Lugs her to church in spite of herself, like a cop!" The young lady smiled, with the faintest suspicion of an alluring blush. "But a man's got to be stronger than a girl," she said—" stronger and more clever, if she—if they—if he is going to be happy. A man's got to be able to dominate and outwit her by fair means " "Or foul?" he interrupted. " Perhaps she wouldn't mird!" " And if she outwits him?" "Then she proves she belongs.to the dominant sex. What nonsense we're talking !" A motor launch rounded thft wharf, and she waved her parasol. The signal was answered bv a flanneled youth at the wheel and 'the boat floated toward the landing-steps. The girl on the wharf jumped up. 'Jack Rogers will ferry me over to the cottage," said she. " Go, I can't ask you to luncheon, for I have to work ail the afternoon. Besides, Mrs Rogers has invited you to dine with us to-night, hasn't she? Good-bye! I hope you will like the hotel." . ',.\. He did not take refuge immediately in the hotel. Ho stood still and glared mournfully, at the gay awning of the departing launch. Then his despondent eyes shifted themselves to the green water beneath him. , " I'm a jellyfish!" he sighed. His despondency was not enlivened by the midday dinner at the seaside inn. A haughty waitress, painfully compressed to the requirements of a cut-paper-pattern

waist, offered him sugar for his salad. She wore as aerial pompadour; he found a portion of it in his coffee, and thought of other curls, and lamented inaudibly. In a comfortless rocking-chair on the hotel piazza, he smoked a distasteful pipe with grim and reflective industry, and when he observed certain symptoms of change in the western sky he descended the steps and accosted a hack-driver. " I wish to walk to the old windmill; how should I go?" "Walk," replied the driver promptly. The young man walked around the head of the harbour. It was three miles to the mill, and no habitation relieved the desert of sand on*either side of the shell road. But the solitude did not' seem to depress him. He slapped his cane against his leg as he turned into the fenced enclosure. . The old mill was a high tower, without a window, excepting one at the top. Behind this aperture he saw a dash of colour. Was it a ray of the setting sun, or a crimson parasol? A placard on the door informed him that the mill was owned by the local historical society, and that the custodian was Jason Nickerson, corner of Sperm and Mackerel streets, where the key was kept. But the keyless door at present was ajar. It was a stout, modern door, equipped with a modern spring-lock. The young man examined the lock attentively. On the inner side there was no latch or lever to open it. He crossed the threshold and shut the door noiselessly and securely behind him. The lock held; he was imprisoned. Then he tiptoed up the winding and shadowy stairs. "Hello!" he said, poking his head genially through the scuttle in the top floor. "Hello:" said the girl. "For goodness' sakeT I wish, now, that I hadn't found the door open, an hour ago, and climbed up here to read." " But this is your paint-shop, isn't it?" "Not up here, stupid! Down on the ground, under that pine tree. You'd have seen my easel there if you had lookted for it. Come on out and inspect the picture." She laid aside her book and the young man grinned. "Come on!" 6he urged impatiently. "The nicture, you know, will give us something worth while to talk about." "Oh, don't Avorry!" said he. ''We'll have plenty to talk about right here. Will you marry me?" "Please don't begin that so soon after this morning. You usually let me have more of an intermission." "But what do you say?" "I say no t" "Then," he announced, "I wouldn't be in your shoes for quite a bit.!' "My shoes?" said she blankly. "If you ever touch my shoes, I'll " "Listen to me." he intruded. " 4 re vou aware that Mrs Rogers, your gabby hostess, runs the biggest gossip-delivery company on the Riverside Drive?" "Of course I am. Welf?" "Well, we happen to be ilocked up together in this windmill," he rejoined. She stared at his with panic-stricken eyes. "What do you mean?" she gasped. "I mean," he said, "that I can't budge the lock of the door, that there's no key in it, and that we can't get out until somebody finds us—Mrs Rogers, or somebody." "I don't believe you!" cried the girl, and she fluttered down the stairs like a nobbled oanary. The young man picked un the crimson parasol, leaned on the window-sill, and looked down. The sheer drop to the ground was one of forty feet or more. The roof of the nearest house was about a mile away. He tried to smile, and failed. "But at least I'm no longer a jellyfish," he muttered. liending over the scuttle, he heard a faint sound, as of little hands beating desperately on the woodwork. "Oh, the dickens !" said he. "Hanged if I guessed it would be as bad as all this!" The sound of the beating hands ceased; it was replaced by that of tiny sobs. He bit his' lios wratihfully and screwed the ferrule of the parasol into the floor. "Are — a . r © you going to leave me down —dtnvn here alone?" wailed the girl's broken voice from below. "What do you think I am?" called the young man. She was crouched on the last step of the stairs, a forlorn figure in the grey dusk. , "Try the lock again," she said tearfully. ' "No use, I'm afraid," he replied, assaulting the immovable door with muqh activity. "No use; it's locked fast. I don't know what we can do, unless "

"I know," ehe interrupted. "I remember a French novel I read at boardingschool. It was 'The Romance of a Poor' —something or other, and ihe hero jumped from a ruined tower to save the heroine's feelings." "I'd be crushed like a bug/ he objected. "What good would that be?" "It was a lovely < story, in a yellow cover," mused the girl. The young man punched his shoulder against* the heavy panel. "Deuce take the thing!" "Well, you needn't swear ep," she advised. "There's no reason for profanity, just because I've got to marry you." "Marry me?" "Certainly 1 We shall have to tell Mrs Rogers, when she finds us here, that we're enlaced. That's the only way to stop her terrible tongue, isn't it?" For answer the young man renewed his atack upon the door " The breeze closed it too tight, said the girl. "Besides, it's not complimentary to turn your back when a lady accepts you." "The breeze had nothing to do with it," he blurted between his teeth. "I closed it myself, like a blooming idiot! I made this asinine and blackguardly play to outwit you—to dominate and win you, if not

fairly, then in the other style. Marry me? I won't have you marrying a blackguard whom you can't forgive!" "How do you know I can't?" ehe murmured, and wavered toward him in the darkness. There Was an ecstatic interval of a minute or two during which no understandable word was spoken. • " I did succeed in dominating you, anyhow!" he exulted tenderly. " I suppose," she whispered, "that it is a sample of the way you'll do it after we are married. Come, now, we must really start for home." "Start for home! How?" Why, out of that door> you precious silly! ' said the girl. " I've got the key m my pocket."