A STUPID GENIUS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3595, 6 February 1923, Page 66

A STUPID GENIUS.

By

K. B. FOOT.

[Copyright.] Harry Shaw was the very last person of whom one would have thought it, but that is the way that things go in this world. He was a newspaper man and a successful one, having worked himself up from the petty reporter to first assistant editor on the Truth and Joy. He was in love, head over ears, heels over head, any term that can describe that utterly blissful, absolutely absurd and ridiculous condition of mind or heart, or whatever it is, that at times overtakes even the most sensible of men. He was' in love but he couldn’t tell her. It’s a fact, he couldn’t. He had tried a dozen times—a dozen? He had tried a hundred, but somehow he couldn’t say to Alice Rogers, “I love- you.” He felt sure she loved him—knew he loved her —had been dancing attendance for over a year, sending her flowers, candy—everything allowable—had found all accepted with thanks, and yet there he was just where he had been on Christmas Eve just a year ago that very day. No, yes, perhaps a little more at home in that big old hduse on lOtfi Street, and that was all. But this Christmas Eve he was determined to make himself a Christmas gift to Alice—no, she was to be his Xmas gift to himself. But how to bring the gift about, from him to her, from her to him; however it should turn out he could not see, indeed, he was all at sea. Too absurd. He, Harry Shaw, with such a persuasive tongue and winning way, that he would corkscrew information out of the most crabbed and stolid of men, “interviewed,” and yet with Alice—dumb! He wondered at himself. That afternoon he wished his papers together impatiently and got un and put on his coat, took his hat, said “I’ll be in about eight”—it was then three in the afternoon—and went out. The air was full of Christmas —bits of green everywhere. He set his teeth. “Alice—Alice,” he said to himself, “I’ll —l’ll—do it to-dav or I’ll ” He couldn’t think what he would do. He went to his rooms at the Benedict, and got some parcels that held gifts for the Rogers family, big and little, and then went un to 10th Street. He was shown in to the big, delightful, home like front parlour, full of books and work and so of evidences of a cultivated taste. Alice came in at once, and led him out to the billiard room where the tree was, and also her mother and her aunt. But even to sober eves Alice was lovely. The parcels were at once opened—that is all but the three for those present.— and their contents admired, and then he began to help tie the bundles on to the tree. “Good gracious!” he said suddenly. “What is the matter?” they all three chied. “Oh, nothing—there are very sharp sort of—er—bristles on this prick one —they really do.” But it was not the “bristles” that had pricked him, but an idea. “I’ll do it—l certainly will—but how? Upon a step-ladder—two other women in the room—likely to stay on the stepladder every minute that I am in the house. Heavens! what a fool I am.” So he was. Just then Mrs Rogers was called out of the room . to see a poor woman who had come for her Christmas gift, and Miss Rogers said that she must go up stairs to get the rest of the things. “How to do it, how to do it.” sang itself in his head, and accident brought the opportunity. “Who is that?” he said, pointing to a picture on the wall. “A question of ‘was’—a great, great uncle.” Uncle! What a leading she had given him. “Curious ! Looks like a dear old uncle of mine.” Oh, shade of Ananias! They were no more alike than a turnip and a peach. “He was a jolly old boy—he really was an old boy, 85 when he died—but a boy all the same, and a jolly one. He told such capital stories and he told them so well—on this branch you say, isn’t it a little heavy ? Try that lower one—yes, that’s better. About my uncle, you know;

well, you didn’t know him, but I did, so it’s all the same.” Here Alice looked up at him, but he did not see her glance; it was a swift one; she thought that he was rattling on it an unusual way, but she kept on tying up bundles with pink twine in a very matter of fact fashion, ’and Harry went on. “Well, he used to tell one story that I thought amazingly good ; I wonder if you will think so. It was about a place down in Rhode Island, called Cranberry Center, where people about a hundred years ago—really, I do mean a hundred years—well this was the story; they conducted their—their courtin’ ” —the word came out with a sudden jerk, and then he said it over again, “courtin’ ” in such a remarkable way—“l want to tell you about it. When, a couple had been—well, you know—keeping company as they* call ‘t this was my uncle’s story, you know. ’ Here Alice looked at him in a slightly slratled and amazed way, and then a dawning light of understanding came into her eyes that he couldn’t see, for he was standing- on the step iust above her head, and a ghost of a smile hovered round ner pretty mouth. “Well," lie said, “my uncle said that when the—the man—lover, you know, lelt that he ought to speak and didn’t know how, and—well, they used to be sitting by what they called the fore-room fire, built on purpose,” he began to hurry his words a little, “alone, you know, of course—no bothering with chaperons then and he’d get the slate, and then he wrote on it.—there was always a pencil tied to the slate—l don’t think they had frames then—on their slates, I mean—he wrote. Hallo! I think that I can show you better—l mean tell you better, if I write it.. Just hand me a bit of that wrapping paper. Thank you, I have a pencil right here—wrote on it this ” Then with a shaking hand he wrote -hree Molds and handed to Alice a many cornered scrap of common brown wrapping paper, on which was written just like this : Yes or , No. Alice took it—looked at it and said in the most casual way: “And what happened then?” “\Vhy, that was the funny part of it. She wet her finger—it was'a slate—and rubbed out either the ‘yes’ or the ‘or no -and Uncle John said it was usually the ‘or no’—and—and then, why, it was considered an engagement.” Wasn t it funny?” Well, said Alice, slowly, “it was queer, and ingenious, too. But this is a great deal more funny—very, very much more funny.” She had stepped behind him, and, luckily, a little way off. M hat is funnier?” said Harry, trying to twist about so that he could see her, and he held a bundle that was about half tied on to the very topmost branch. As he did so—- , ' • Giis,” said Alice, and she handed him the paper. He looked at it quite dazed for a moment, for where the “or no” had been there had been a black smudge—for the pencil had been a soft one. Suddenly the bundle crashed down to the floor through the 'branches, and they all swayed violently, and he made one leap to the floor and her side. “You dearest gnl, and his arm was round hir, and he had kissed her—absolutely kissed her—before he said “Do you mean it? Do vou absolutely mean it? Shall we—shall <, - vou real, y—really mean it?” Harry Shaw,” she said, “you are certainly a paradox—at once the most ingenious and most stupid of men.” And then she put her head down on his shoulder and laughed, but her eyes were wet when he raised it again. And when Jack Rogers said: “What did Mr -Shaw say to you, sister, when he asked you to be engaged to him?” Alice said, quite truthfully, “Not one word.”