YPES, said a shrewd dramatic

TYPES, said a shrewd dramatic

critic some years ago, exist in the theater, never in real life. Recalling myself to the better discretion, I restrain a first impulse to suggest that though the Middle West produced her, actually as a type she belongs pretty much to the wide world, with possible reservations regarding China and the Ottoman Empire or the neighborhood of Cape Horn, all of which places are misty and far away. At any rate, with reference to types and hemispheres brushed aside as of slender importance, the main concern is the woman herself. And to tell the truth, Miss Myrtle Ryan was rather climactically concerned about herself. One anchored the fact to an odd little pucker as she completed the details of tidying her desk for the night and unpinning the neat paper sleeves. Except for this pucker, Miss Ryan's face was round and smooth. Massage and creams cost frantically, but one had one's selfrespect to think of; it went with being an optimist. She blew a few Chicago soft-coal cinders off the current page of her little memo desk calendar, then, making sure that she had transferred such of the memos as were not already checked into her special office note-book, she removed the calendar leaf and stood a moment, eying the shorthand jottings on to-morrow's page. To-morrow-August 19. Would it be momentous? Times innumerable

she had stood thus, surveying a new leaf of the desk calendar; but her optimism conquered, and the pucker waned. "We'll see," she thought, starting for the locker-room for her hat.

On the way her path was crossed by Mr. Sam Sheffelin, the assistant office manager. He had an almost perfectly triangular face and an officiously nervous manner; but what annoyed Miss Ryan most was the extremely low V-cut of his waistcoat. She considered herself at least a semi-authority on men's clothes, having at one time in the distant past acted for a few months as supply secretary to the president of an important big clothing house. The privilege of this insight had convinced her that low V's were vulgar.

"What about the James P. Brockdau Company's complaint about the valves in those radiators sent out last week, Miss Ryan?" Mr. Sheffelin asked in his somewhat tight, rasping voice, tapping rapidly with his pencil on the edge of the nearest desk.

It was, she told herself, this habit of tapping things with a pencil that always flurried her when accosted by Mr. Sam Sheffelin. As a matter of fact, the valve complaint had been thoroughly disposed of earlier in the afternoon; but the assistant office manager liked to accost as many people as he could on their way to the lockers.

Miss Ryan's present contribution of refreshment to Mr. Sheffelin's memory was quite humble and conciliatory; but as she adjusted the modish summery hat, it pleased her to fancy that she won a not unimportant victory over the assistant office manager.

She surveyed her face in the lockerroom mirror, applied a suspicion of powder skilfully. The smile which had previously accompanied that somewhat wistful "We 'll see" returned; for the fact of this difference inevitably brought to mind Mr. William Rogers Tait, who three years ago had demonstrated for Miss Ryan that degree of niceness to which office managership can attain. But here was a transcending of the mere business realm, for Mr. William Rogers Tait was all inextricably, even all thrillingly, mixed up with what has been called the climactic concern about herself. Those two spots of temper merged into a more diffused blush. She looked really handsome in her medium-large way yes, she would furtively admit, quite beautiful-as she thought of the supreme office manager who had entered her life three years ago while she was with the Coburn-Dodge Corrugated Box Company on South Clark Street. The present F. M. Robertson & Son Radiator Company possessed undoubtedly a more elegant establishment, and was located on Michigan Boulevard, along with all the big motor-car concerns; but think of having to deal with. a man like Mr. Sam Sheffelin, with his triangular face and vulgar waistcoats!

"Life seems to be that way," the woman sighed; for it was in her to speak of life in all sorts of connections, just as it was to keep mellifluous generalizing mottos, especially by such

thinkers as Dr. Van Dyke, pinned up on her bedroom wall at the boardinghouse. Mr. William Rogers Tait was now far away. He had gone on the road two and a half years ago—on the fourteenth of January, the date of her leaving the Coburn-Dodge Corrugated Box Company. To be perfectly exact, she had left the box company on South Clark Street the same day that Mr. Tait left it: however, this is picayune adherence to exactness; besides, the loyalty was mutual.

It had developed, especially since the time of leaving the South Clark Street office, into a strong and beautiful romance. The words "strong" and "beautiful" were favorite words with Miss Ryan. Her friendship with Mr. Tait had intrenched itself "strongly" during their "mutual" relationship in the Coburn-Dodge Company, but it was during the ensuing two years and a half that it had become "beautiful." They had corresponded faithfully. Of course he had been occasionally in Chicago, too, although his present company, the Standard Motor Tire Company, Ltd., was located in Akron, Ohio.

There had been just one glancing digression from what had developed into the salient "romance" of her life; that was ten months ago, when Mr. F. M. Robertson, Jr. (the "Son" in the radiator firm), had paid her tentative court. He had been very nice, and had taken her out to dinner upon several occasions; but then Mr. Robertson, Jr., had gone abroad in the interests of building up a foreign market, and from Europe he had gone on to the Orient; and when finally he came back, on the ninth of last May, their relationship stood merely in a condition of pleasant nod and

occasional office chat. Mr. Robertson, Jr.'s, friendship gave her a feeling of "strong" footing with the radiator company, and helped bolster her attitude toward Mr. Sam Sheffelin; but the timid stirring of romance here died out, leaving her unqualifiedly loyal to William Rogers Tait.

As she descended in the elevator from the seventh floor, and particularly as she turned into the homemoving rush of Michigan Boulevard, Miss Ryan was in an excited frame of mind. It had occurred to her in the middle of the afternoon, while taking dictation from the president, that instead of writing a special-delivery letter concerning next week Sunday, she could send a telegram. It would not cost very much, and would be more in keeping with the "approaching climax in her life." Miss Ryan often felt things like this "psychically." She was as sure of an approaching climax now as she had ever been sure of anything. True, there had been rather a good many expected climaxes back across the years that had turned out to be only so-so, but here figured the beautiful optimism.

"I

"Let's see," she pondered. wonder if I could stop in at the telegraph office now and still be home in time for dinner." Mrs. Felger, proprietor of the boarding house in Clayton Street, "near Lincoln Park," was inclined to be fastidious about promptness; nor did her soups improve as they cooled. "I somehow feel," she proceeded, glancing at an array of new blouses in a shop window, "as though I wanted to be very leisurely to-night. Why can't I send off the telegram and then take a car as far as that cafeteria on North Clark Street?" She liked to treat herself once in a while to a little

independent dinner; had certain theories about being decently good to oneself. "Yes, I think I will. If I'm not there by a quarter to seven, Mrs. Felger will know I'm dining out; perhaps she 'll think Mr. Robertson, Jr., has invited me again." Nor would it be necessary too precisely to deprive Mrs. Felger of this interesting surmise. "I suppose," she carried on her planning, "I might go to the telegraph desk in one of the big hotels." It would represent a valid excuse, and Miss Ryan adored the atmosphere of the leading hotels. But she had already walked past her favorite, the Blankley, and the Concourse was, she knew, crowded with a convention. After all, though with certain temptations toward going into the Loop district, she decided to visit a certain unassuming telegraph office in Adams Street. There she had once despatched Christmas greetings to Mr. Tait, and thus felt a faint sentimental attachment.

$ 2

There was no one ahead of her at the desk, and she optimistically thought, "I'm in luck!" It was not a busy part of the day. In fact, there was but one telegraph clerk in evidence. He stood with an elbow resting on the counter, and his cheek against a hand; the posture hunched his shoulders and gave a long relaxed slope to his back, while his feet, one crossed against the other, were planted at some distance behind the counter, for greater ease in lounging. There was a pencil thrust above one ear. His forehead wrinkled, and he was staring a little dreamily out into the hot street. Miss Ryan presently remembered having seen him now and then strolling in the

evening along the waterfront, out near Lincoln Park. She was sure he was the same man; it was an item of pride with Miss Ryan that she never forgot a face.

"I want to send off a telegram, please." Miss Ryan smiled, unconsciously using the smile which revealed her two very slight dimples. There was a different way of smiling-not letting the lips part-that left the cheeks quite smooth and uneventful. This one, however, was the fuller and more gracious smile. The other sort always suggested that, despite the silver linings of life, Miss Ryan's humor had developed with the lengthening perspective of maidenhood a certain ironic grimness.

"All right," the clerk answered, straightening. He supplied her with a tablet of blank forms.

"Which is this," she asked, “a regular night telegram?"

"Yes. Did you want a nightletter?" He had a way of speaking which was abrupt, a bit cynical, though not quite curt.

"Well, I'm not sure. When would the night-letter get there?"

"Where is it going to?" he inquired; and the faint tone of weariness, summoning a vista of similar patient reminders, rebuked a little.

"I'm sending it to Louisville, Kentucky."

"To-morrow morning." "Early?"

"Yes."

"But not too early?" she half implored. "It won't make them call him up out of bed?"

"Somewhere around eight-eight or

nine."

"I suppose"-she hesitated “a night-letter would do just as well as a

telegram, and of course you can say so much more."

"Fifty words."

"Yes, fifty instead of ten. And a telegram costs more, does n't it?"

"Would you like the rate?" He rapidly ran his finger down a line of figures. Miss Ryan smiled again.

"Does n't it seem queer that any one would choose to pay more for ten words than less for fifty? But of course it depends on how quickly you have to get it there. I think I'll take the night-letter. Is this the form?" "Yes. You'll find more at that table if you care to sit down."

"Thanks; I may as well."

The woman seated (it might perhaps be said that she "established") herself at the table, looking as cool, as possessed, and in a way as queenly as she always looked behind her own desk. She took up a pencil attached to a chain which kinked and snarled quite wretchedly; that was the way with the pencils in telegraph offices. She wrote steadily for a moment or so, then realized that she had used nearly all of the allotted fifty words without really coming to the body of her communication. Crumpling the form, she selected another, but this time so reduced the substance to skeleton that it was certain no one but she could have more than a hazy notion of what it was all about.

"Oh dear!" she thought, "should I have sent a special delivery?"

But a third effort seemed more satisfactory. While evolving it, Miss Ryan was intermittently aware of scrutiny. Glancing up, she squarely met the eyes of the clerk.

He was not startlingly good-looking, and his hair was very thin on top, especially in front; but she had passed

him again and again on warm evenings along the lake-front, and the very fact that he was sending this night-letter off to Louisville seemed drawing him a little bit into her romance with William Rogers Tait.

The clerk had very nice eyes, as though he had suffered,-that was the way she put it: "as though he had suffered in his life," and she glanced up again discreetly. Yes, the V of his waistcoat was nice and shallow, refined. And from the V she went back to wondering what his life had been, how he had suffered.

The message completed, Miss Ryan again approached the counter.

"You'd better go through it and see if you can read all the words, although I've been complimented on my hand." "It's quite clear," he assured her, his eyes skimming the message. "A week from Sunday will be my birthday and I was wondering whether you could arrange to be in Chicago. We could plan a little celebration-perhaps go out to Ravinia in the evening for grand opera. Am engaging two seats on the chance. Long since I 've had a letter. Am writing more fully. Myrtle.'"

There was something almost magnetic in the way the telegraph clerk pronounced her name; not that she could say what it was, only that it was just that-magnetic.

"Yes," she said, feeling ever so much more excited than when the idea of the telegram had come to her in the afternoon. "How much will it be?"

"You have fifty-four words. Do you want to pay for the extra ones or cut it down to fifty?"

"Fifty-four? Oh dear! Are there any words that can come out?"

be'," he suggested, whistling sketchily. He had a queer way of whistling through his teeth; it seemed to detach him miles from his immediate surroundings.

"How silly of me not to have thought of that!" she cordially apologized. "That cuts it down to fiftythree."

Their heads were drawn rather together, and she was sure he sniffed her perfume.

"'Wonder' instead of 'was wonder

ing"."

"Oh, yes, and just 'celebration' instead of 'little celebration.' I don't want it to sound too grand; that 's why I put in 'little.' But I guess 'celebration' is understood as a semijesting word in a connection like this, is n't it?"

The clerk judged corroboration unnecessary. As a matter of fact, though his business was in words, he was not the English authority Miss Ryan's years of expert stenography had made her. Instead, he merely offered:

"One more word and you 're fixed. How about saying 'go to Ravinia'? Is n't that enough? From here on," he added a trifle drily, "you 've been more telegraphic."

"Why did n't I think of that!" she deplored. "It 's awfully good of you to take so much trouble. Would you mind reading it through to me again, just to be sure it's all right?"

He read the message a second time. She waited for him to come to her name, and when he pronounced it once more, she blushed.

"Do you want to put your telephone number here in the corner?"

"I have n't a telephone," Miss Ryan