Big Poker Site hazard of new fortunes 74

said Beaton. "Miss Woodburn is wild for a real Northern winter," Mrs. Leighton explained. "The othah naght Ah woke up and looked oat of the window and saw all the roofs covered with snow, and it turned oat to be nothing but moonlaght. Ah was never so disappointed in mah lahfe," said Miss Woodburn. "If youll come to St. Barnaby next summer, you shall have all the winter you want," said Alma. "I cant let you slander St. Barnaby in that way," said Beaton, with the air of wishing to be understood as meaning more than he said. "Yes?" returned Alma, coolly. "I didnt know you were so fond of the climate." "I never think of it as a climate. Its a landscape. It doesnt matter whether its hot or cold." "With the thermometer twenty below, youd find that it mattered," Alma persisted. "Is that the way you feel about St. Barnaby, too, Mrs. Leighton?" Beaton asked, with affected desolation. "I shall be glad enough to go back in the summer," Mrs. Leighton conceded. "And I should be glad to go now," said Beaton, looking at Alma. He had the dummy of Every Other Week in his hand, and he saw Almas eyes wandering toward it whenever he glanced at her. "I should be glad to go anywhere to get out of a job Ive undertaken," he continued, to Mrs. Leighton. "Theyre going to start some sort of a new illustrated magazine, and theyve got me in for their art department. Im not fit for it; Id like to run away. Dont you want to advise me a little, Mrs. Leighton? You know how much I value your taste, and Id like to have you look at the design for the cover of the first number: theyre going to have a different one for every number. I dont know whether youll agree with me, but I think this is rather nice." He faced the dummy round, and then laid it on the table before Mrs. Leighton, pushing some of her work aside to make room for it and standing over her while she bent forward to look at it. Alma kept her place, away from the table. "Mah goodness! Ho exciting!" said Miss Woodburn. "May anybody look?" "Everybody," said Beaton. "Well, isnt it perfectly choming!" Miss Woodburn exclaimed. "Come and look at this, Miss Leighton," she called to Alma, who reluctantly approached. "What lines are these?" Mrs. Leighton asked, pointing to Beatons pencil scratches. "Theyre suggestions of modifications," he replied. "I dont think they improve it much. What do you think, Alma?" "Oh, I dont know," said the girl, constraining her voice to an effect of indifference and glancing carelessly down at the sketch. "The design might be improved; but I dont think those suggestions would do it." "Theyre mine," said Beaton, fixing his eyes upon her with a beautiful sad dreaminess that he knew he could put into them; he spoke with a dreamy remoteness of tone--his wind-harp stop, Wetmore called it. "I supposed so," said Alma, calmly. "Oh, mah goodness!" cried Miss Woodburn. "Is that the way you awtusts talk to each othah? Well, Ahm glad Ahm not an awtust--unless I could do all the talking." "Artists cannot tell a fib," Alma said, "or even act one," and she laughed in Beatons upturned face. He did not unbend his dreamy gaze. "Youre quite right. The suggestions are stupid." Alma turned to Miss Woodburn: "You hear? Even when we speak of our own work." "Ah nevah hoad anything lahke it!" "And the design itself?" Beaton persisted. "Oh, Im not an art editor," Alma answered, with a laugh of exultant evasion. A tall, dark, grave-looking man of fifty, with a swarthy face and iron-gray mustache and imperial and goatee, entered the room. Beaton knew the type; he had been through Virginia sketching for one of the illustrated papers, and he had seen such men in Richmond. Miss Woodburn hardly needed to say, "May Ah introduce you to mah fathaw, Conel Woodburn, Mr. Beaton?" The men shook hands, and Colonel Woodburn said, in that soft, gentle, slow Southern voice without our Northern contractions: "I am very glad to meet you, sir; happy to make yo acquaintance. Do not move, madam," he said to Mrs. Leighton, who made a deprecatory motion to let him pass to the chair beyond her; "I can find my way." He bowed a bulk that did not lend itself readily to the devotion, and picked up the ball of yarn she had let drop out of her lap in half rising. "Yo worsteds, madam." "Yarn, yarn, Colonel Woodburn!" Alma shouted. "Youre quite incorrigible. A spade

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