The moment my back was turned
you vamoosed from the waiting room. That wasn't kind. If I hadn't a
known how fond you wuz of roses, I would a been stumped, stumped for
good. I trailed you by them roses."

The girl sensed that there was something wrong.

"Lady, farewell," said Keats.

With a little moan she saw him being led off.

"What's wrong?" I asked the intruder.

"Bugs on beauty, that's all. Thinks he's a guy named John Keats who
wrote poems. Harmless case. Wouldn't hurt a fly. I was bringing him over
to see his mother when he give me the slip. Gee, but I can breathe easy
now."

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever," declared the spirit of Keats.

"Sure, sure," said the attendant, lighting a cigar.

When I turned to leave the park the girl from Marmelstein's came up to
me.

"What happened?" she inquired. Her fists were clenched and she was
breathing heavily.

I explained.

"He was such a gentleman," she sobbed softly.

THE OTHER ROOM[20]

[Note 20: Copyright, 1919, by The McCall Company. Copyright, 1920,
by Mary Heaton O'Brien.]

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

From _McCall's Magazine_

It was after John MacFarland was Captain of Black Bar Life-Saving
Station for nearly twenty years. Every summer evening all that time I
would see him and Mis' MacFarland driving along to the station, for in
the summer the crew is off for two months and only the Captain stays
there from sundown to sunup.

I never saw her drive past without thinking how she hated to look at the
sea. She never sat where she could see salt water. She had been going
out to Black Bar all these years and never once had seen the boat-drill.
This was because she knew, on account of her husband's being a
life-saver, what the sea does to the vessels and the men in them.

When Mis' MacFarland's married daughter died and her little
granddaughter Moira came to live with her, I would see all of them, the
Captain, Mis' MacFarland and Moira, driving to the station summer
evenings, Moira's head peeping out between them like a little bird. And
I would always think how Mis' MacFarland hated the sea, and I'd be real
glad that the blowing of the sand grinds the station windows white till
you can't see through them.

Then John MacFarland died all of a sudden just at the end of the summer.
He had been building a yawl out there at the station for nearly two
years, and she was just ready to la'nch. I remember meeting him on the
boardwalk and him telli