Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/323



EVIOUSLY, and in dark ways, does Destiny move. Why was it, that serenest and quietest of days, under a dome of July's most tranquil azure, that there was no befriending voice to warn Mistress Pauline Augusta Persons of the danger that hung over her, of the calamity that awaited her?

Three times, that morning, she had been solemnly wedded to Curly Persons, the cocker spaniel, before an altar erected for the purpose behind the chicken-coop. After each ceremony she had generously taken her somewhat restive and altogether unimpressed bridegroom for an extended wedding-tour, around the block, in the gardener's wheelbarrow.

Then, tiring of courtship so one-sided, she had returned to her three dirty and battered dolls, and wandering down to that forbidden but well-loved pile of sawdust just below the ice-house, was happily engaged in conducting funeral services, crooning brokenly to