The Perils of Pauline | Page 7

Wasn't it for some other reason?"
Pauline thought a moment, while Harry lit a cigarette and his father worked his fingers down toward the mummy's right wrist.
"No," said Pauline, "I remember now. It wasn't to cure it at all. It was to make it keep quiet."
"Ho, ho!" laughed Harry. "I never knew of any one making it flutter much. I guess that was no dream."
Harry's father silenced him with an impatient gesture and turned to Pauline, who was watching the wind make cat's paws on the polished surface of the Hudson River.
"Go on, girl, go on. This is remarkable. I have read of this custom in the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead'! Why did they want to keep your heart quiet?"
"They said," continued Pauline, dreamily, "that after I died my spirit was to be called before somebody -- a God, I guess -- who would judge whether I was good enough for Heaven or not. That stone beetle was placed on my heart to make it keep silent and not tell anything wicked I might have done in life. Aren't dreams crazy things? Say, Harry, there goes a hydroplane."
The two young people hung out the open window. The old man was absorbed, too. He had at last worked his fingers along the entire length of the mummy's right wrist. It was dry and hard as any mummy he had ever seen, but it bore neither bracelet nor any ornament whatever.
"Well," he said, reluctantly, "it was all a dream, interesting but not important. Like Polly's dream, it was just the echo of something I have read or seen."
"Oh, pshaw! What are dreams, anyway?" muttered Harry, with impatience.
"Dreams," said Pauline, authoritatively, "dreams are the bubbles which rise to the surface of the mind when it cools down in sleep."
"Now," observed Harry, quietly, "when you and father are through talking about mummies and dreams I wish you would consider something that I am interested in. I'd like to know how soon you are going to marry me?"
"Where did you get that definition of dreams, Polly?" asked the old man.
"From my story," said Pauline, proudly.
Both men at once remembered that she had gone to find the magazine and show them her first story. They eagerly demanded to see it.
Pauline picked up the Cosmopolitan from the floor. She had dropped it in her agitation at finding her foster father had fainted. Sure enough, there it was:
FIRE ON AN OCEAN LINER
By Pauline Marvin.
It was not the biggest feature by any means, but it was quite a little story, and there were several large stirring illustrations. Both men begged her to read it to them, but she modestly declined.
Mr. Marvin adjusted his spectacles and read it through from start to finish, frequently looking up to compliment the authoress on some point that pleased him. Harry looked over his father's shoulder, and there could be no doubt they were both held and even thrilled by the story.
Mr. Marvin clapped his hands and stated in a loud voice that he was proud of her. Harry expressed his appreciation by a bear-like hug and a kiss, all of which she accepted with blushes and protests.
"And -- er -- did they actually pay you something for this?" asked the old gentleman.
"Oh, yes," Pauline assured him. "They sent me a check at once. It paid for that frock you told me was too extravagant."
"A hundred dollars?" ventured Harry from the depths of his ignorance of things feminine.
Both Pauline and his father cast pitying glances at him.
"Look here, young man," said the elder Marvin, "whoever led you to believe that you could buy dresses for a girl like Polly at a hundred dollars? If you contemplate matrimony on any such deluded basis as that you had better back out now before it's too late. Isn't that so, Polly?"
"Why, father," protested the youth, "what do I care what her dresses cost? Polly knows everything I have or ever make is hers, and I can't think of a more satisfactory way of spending it than on her."
"That's fine, Harry," laughed the father, "you have just the ideal frame of mind and the proper sentiments for a modern husband. You will find, too, that women are very reasonable. If a man gives his wife all he makes, plus the vote, and lets her do just as she pleases -- she'll usually let him live in the same house with her, and even get up early enough to see him at breakfast once in a while."
"I agree to everything," declared Harry, with the reckless abandon of youth in love. "But I want to know how soon Polly is going to marry me."
Pauline, who had said nothing in answer to the preliminary skirmishes, now recognized the main attack and opened up in reply.
"I told you I would marry Harry