Elspeth

By ONOTO WATANN A

The "flapper” may be passing, but girls like
si.z'teen—gear-old Elspeth are peculiar to no
particular period. This is a good story and
a delightful character study by a famous Cana-

dian Author.

, ’ ‘Kg, LSPETH was sixteen years old.
it ‘ She was pretty and tempera-
 mental, or, as an unkind friend
,  once described her, “temperish”.
Her mother was exactly eighteen
years older than Elspeth, and that fact the girl
seized upon to “rub in” when the other woman
attempted to prohibit the early association with
youthful members of the opposite sex.

“You're a nice one to preach,” cried Elspeth,
her eyes dancing. “You must have had beaus
when you were in short skirts. How old was
father when you married him?”

“Your father was twenty-one”, replied Mrs.
Maitland, very rosy and flustered.

“Ah—ha! 1W ell, one of you was of age any-
way. That’s enough, isn't it?” She added the
last question with a certain artlessness that
nevertheless perturbed her mother.

“But Ellie, dear, I wouldn’t want you to
make the mistake I did.”

“Mistake!” Instantly Elspeth was on the
warm defensive.

“Are you trying to say that your marriage
to my father was a mistake then?” she de-
manded indignantly.

“Yes, it was a mistake, Ellie,” affirmed her
mother quietly, “for we were nothing but child-
ren, and I believe things might have been very
different for your father. . . .And then his
people might not. . . .”

“His people, uh?”

Elspeth seized the opportunity to demand in-
formation concerning “my. father’s people.”

“Who were they, anyway? And why don’t
I know them? And where do they live? And
why don’t they like you mother? How is it
you never talk about them?”

“Why, they are just ordinary people, Ellie.
You don’t know them because they live a great
distance from here—in the east, and as for their
liking or not liking me. . . ."

She hesitated, bit her lip and turned from
her daughter. Instantly Elspeth sprang to her,
excited, thrilled, and convinced that her
“hunch” about her father and his people was
correct. He had married beneath him! That

 
 

was it. No doubt, he came of an illustrious
and very wealthy family, while her mother. . .
well, Elspeth’s mother, as she once herself
quaintly expressed it, had always been
“Saturday's Child”, who must work for her
living.

“Mother, tell me the truth at once. You’ve
kept it so long from me. Is’nt there a great
romance in your life about you and my dear
dead father? Weren’t his people multi-million-
aires, or swells of some kind? Did they
object to his marrying beneath him? Don’t
be hurt, muzzie. For my part I admire work-
ing girls, and if it was’nt for other plans al-
ready made, I might be one myself some day.
But do tell me. . .”

“Ellie, you foolish child, if you must know,
your father's father was a plumber. My father
was a college professor”. . .

“Oh-h—h!”

Ellie had turned pale. She was -hard hit.
Her eyes looked luminous and very large, as
she took in this intensely humiliating informa-
tion concerning her antecedents. Her pride
was in the dust, and all of her fine castles
tumbling about her. She felt that she never
never could adjust herself to the thought of
being a plumber’s grandchild. After a long
and painful silence, she said resentfully:

“Then I don’t see why they objected to his
marrying you.”

“I never said that they did. You’ve been
imagining things.”

“Well, but they never speak to you."

“Yes, they do, when we see each other, but
the years and distance are great separators,
Ellie.”

“And didn't you even elope then?”

“Now, Ellie, that’s a foolish question. We
came out here like ‘a couple of foolish children
to avoid the objections which put parents
naturally were raising to our marriage on
account of our extreme youth.”

“Anyway”, said Ellie triumphantly, “you
did elope. You can't get away from that.”

Mrs. Wlaitland sighed, and Elspeth, her
attention already diverted by a group of

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