Page 42 - 1923 Hartridge

C"
Yes, it is a revelation, isn't it? She has made such a success of it. The jokes are much more rehned than they used to he.
“ Katherine Verlenden was helping her for a time but she didn’t care tor such light-minded work, so now she is making speeches of a decidedly Red cast in New York. She always has a few policemen trailing her
around at the different halls where she is speaking, in case of a riot.
It did seem so incongruous that I couldn’t help laughing, almost uproariously, I fear. When I could speak again, I asked Laura if she
had heard of Helen Palmer. She said no, hut seemed very eager to hear. so I told her what little I knew, how Helen had plunged off into the wilder­ ness of Louisiana to seek truth and the whys and wherefores of this, world, and how she never turned up again. Helen wrote me sometime ago and asked my advice upon the intended expedition.
But then 1 remembered that I had heard nothing of Dorothy Blanche and Marion Drake.
“Oh,” said Laura, “poor Marion has had such a hard time. She was studying dancing in New ^ ork and had promise of many big things before her when she stubbed her toe and broke it. It was really quite a catastrophe. Of course, she couldn’t expect to dance any more; the poor girl was quite broken up by it. She came back to Plainfield, where she moped for a while, getting thinner by the minute. Finally, in des­
peration, her family sent her to Europe where, I hear, she has been quite
mixed up in diplomatic affairs; the cause of the fall and rise of kingdoms, I believe.
“Dorothy Blanche is playing the oboe in the Plainfield Symphony and is making a great success of it. She received her training in Moscow and created quite a sensation in New York, a few years ago.”
Laura lifted her cup and tilted it toward her, inspecting the tea leaves strewn over its bottom.
“ Tell me,” she questioned, “ what ever became of Alice Knox and
Julia and Nelle? I’m so busy I don’t keep up with what’s going on lately.”
I turned serious. “Well, no one knows what struck poor Al. She completely lost her head. She went back to Highland Park and was very' happy there until she suddenly disappeared. A year later, having kept her family and the whole world in total ignorance of her whereabouts.
she was found, incognito, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, living with an old
Page 36
J
I
!