Books › Blue Book v25 n01 [1917-05], 1917 › scan 59
Scan 59
Blue Book v25 n01 [1917-05], 1917
60 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Alias Mrs. Blair Coulter
3SHE raised her brows, and her eyes widened at the unexpectedness of his suspicion. And as she thought how funny it was, she smiled up at him. She smiled with her great brown eyes and her full young lips, with a smile that seemed suddenly to transform and beautify her whole being, that illuminated her face and spread its warm radiance everywhere.
5"No, Uncle Elias—" she began, but he interrupted her.
7"Wait a minute," he commanded.
9He stood there looking at her, the anger suddenly gone from his frown, the coldness suddenly gone from that darting light that came from under his hairy brows.
11"Did you ever see your Grandmother Paulson?" he demanded at length.
13"My father's mother?"
15"Yes—and my mother."
17"No sir. I never saw her. She is dead, isn't she?"
19"Many years ago. But I saw her again just now—when you smiled."
21"You mean I am like her? I'm so glad."
23"Glad, eh? Why?"
25She sighed wearily.
27"Because I did so hate the thought of growing up to be like nothing but a Langwell or a Texler. They are not a bit thrilling, the Langwells and Texlers. And I do so want to be thrilling."
29He grunted. He seemed to do it because he could find no reply to make to a statement so startlingly unintelligible to him. He looked at her in a puzzled sort of way for a moment, and then he grunted again.
31"What did you come here to-day for?" he growled. "Thrills?"
33She stared a moment in unbelief, and then suddenly she burst into a gay laugh of sheer, uncontrollable joy.
35"Oh, Uncle Elias!" she cried. "You are funny! Fancy being really thrilled by you!"
37HE sputtered and fumed, and he looked for a time as if he were going to turn them all out of the house, but her joyous young laugh rang all of the gloom out of the dingy old room. It was irresistibly infectious. Before he knew it, he had started to smile too, but he straightened his face the moment he realized it and quickly put on his severest frown of displeasure.
39"Stop it!" he cried. "For heaven's sake, stop it! You'll have my servants laughing next, and they haven't laughed in twenty years."
41She subsided slowly, but even then the little laughs bubbled up into her eyes and through her pretty lips.
43"I really couldn't help it, Uncle Elias," she apologized. "It was your fault, you know. I intended to be very serious with you to-day but when you spoke of thrilling me—"
45And again she laughed in spite of his petulant "Stop it!" and soon, to his own immense discomfiture, he found that he was laughing too—not laughing, perhaps, but chuckling inside of himself far enough down so that it would not show too plainly.
47"Now, what is it you want?" he demanded. "You want something, of course. No one ever comes to see me unless they want something."
49Instantly the mirth died, and her great eyes softened in sympathy. She put her hand on his arm, gently, understandingly.
51"Oh, Uncle Elias," she said, "I'm so sorry."
53That was all. They stood motionless for a long time, her hand still laid in human kindness upon his arm, her big brown eyes warm with the honest fellow-love that her low voice had spoken. He looked down at her with a suspicious pursing of his thin lips, and then he quietly put her hand away with his own.
55"You are a Paulson," he said. "Now tell me all about it."
57She called Luigi then, and the lad came forward with his tattered violin-case under his arm. She wished that he would not glare quite so proudly—or was it insolently?—at Uncle Elias, for she saw that the old man noticed it at once, and the hardening of his steely eyes showed that he resented it.
59SHE launched at once into her story in an effort to distract her uncle's attention. She told all about their meeting with Luigi and of his ambition to be a great violinist, and she told also how
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