ELSPETH

young people passing the house added hastily:

“Poor old muzzie! Well, you should
worry!” Then screamed to the passing girl
without:

“Hi-yi, Dot! Wait for me, will you!”
She was out of the house in a flash, and arms
linked with her friend’s was waltzing down the
street to the strains of a whistled melody,
which came from the background of youths
who loitered, simpering, behind the girls.

Mrs. Maitland, looking after the dancing
young figure disappearing down the pretty
tree-ed street again sighed.

IT was no easy matter to govern the head-
strong passionate young creature that fate
had confided to her care, and whom she
was obliged to leave all of the week days.
ElIie’s wants grew like an ever rolling snow
ball, and there were so many things she was
obliged to ban, for the girl’s own good, ‘and
neither Ellie’s tears nor her defiance were com-
forting matters to face upon her return from
work. She had solved the problem of the
play, the dance, the movie and the joy rides
with gay parties of young folk, and she no
longer sat up for Elspeth, dancing till the
small hours. They had come to a satis-
factory arrangement. Elspeth was to have
definite evenings out; she was to be home at
a stated hour, and her mother would know
exactly who was her escort and who consti-
tuted the party. On the other hand, she agreed
to allow her child to invite her friends to the
house on the evenings she was in. Indeed the
little house rang with mirth and music and
motion day as well as night. Upon her return
from work, it was no uncommon thing to hear
the gramophone bleating out some banging
waltz or foxtrot, as the whirling young couples
ranged over the entire lower floor. Rugs were
pulled up, and furniture thrust back to the
wall. Elspeth’s lovely, flushed face and starry
eyes somehow compensated the mother for the
sacrifice of those peaceful hours which in her
heart of hearts she craved above all things.

Ellie always broke like a flower from the
midst of the merriest group, and rushing to her
mother, she would cry breathlessly something
like this:

“Oh Muzzie, is’nt that just a pippin of a
waltz song? Don’t you just love it? Old
thing dear, your supper’s red hot in the
oven. I’ve got it all fixed for you, angel.”

Her mother often thought that she would
have preferred to buy or make the cake herself
rather than clean up after Elspeth, who thrust
pans behind and under the stove, and piled
pots and dishes and cups into pails and “any
old place” where they could be hidden for
the time being.

Twenty/-four

THE QUILL

HOWEVER, the noise and movement that

seemed always somehow to be in the wake
of Elspeth and the upset house, over which a
trail of the girl’s things were scattered were
minor matters compared with a more serious
menace to the peace of mind of her mother.
The business woman was none the less mother
enough to regard with indulgence mere mat-
ters of noise and sauciness, and all girls at that
age, she believed, had a constitutional reluct-
ance to housework. Girls of Elspeth’s time,
thought her mother sadly, literally jazzed
their way through life, while their bewildered
and befuddled parents prayed for that period
to pass hastily, and sometimes wondered why
God had cursed them. So she blamed not her
daughter for what she believed was the
inherent nature of a girl of her age, and she
endured with a mother’s patience the affliction
of the innocuous company of immature young-
sters continually in her house, and that atmos-
phere of careless disorder that pervaded the
place. Then suddenly she found herself
fronted by a new problem~—one that aroused
her alarm and concern and kept her up nights,
hovering at the top of the stairs or the hall,
leaning over the banister to peer down and
listen, till Elspeth should come slowly and
reluctantly to bed.

All the way up in the car, Mrs. Maitland
had been thinking of Hal Holloway, and of
that tumultuous hour the night before, when
her daughter had flown into a passion at her
attempt to curb an affair that was taking on
serious proportions.

HOLLOWAY was a newcomer in Elspeth’s

“crowd”, and was older than her other
friends. His people belonged on the West side
of the town. A lVlcGill student, home for the
summer vacation, he had in some way drifted
into this younger set on the hutnbler side of
the city and of which Elspeth was the leading
spirit and magnet. There was something mag-
netic about Elspeth’s personality, something
that drew about her all the young people of
the neighborhood, and made her highly popu-
lar wherever she went. She seemed to live and
thrive upon excitement and thrills. Elspeth
had no patience with the leisurely wayfarers
along life’s pretty pathways; she herself was
breathlessly engaged in hurtling her way
through. It seemed to her mother that this
strange child of hers was always running, like
one in a breathless race, and many a time she
tried to check and hold the girl back in her
headlong career.

“Ellie, Ellie, don't go through life as if you
were in a race to catch a train. There's whole
heaps of time. Walk, dear, or better still, sit
down awhile by the wayside.”