The Project Gutenberg EBook of Who Cares?, by Cosmo Hamilton

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Title: Who Cares?

Author: Cosmo Hamilton

Posting Date: April 24, 2009 [EBook #3641]
Release Date: January, 2003
First Posted: July 1, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHO CARES? ***

Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.

WHO CARES?

A STORY OF ADOLESCENCE

by

COSMO HAMILTON

TO

MY YOUNG BROTHER

ARTHUR

WHO PLAYS THE GAME

"Another new novel?"

"Well,--another novel."

"What's it about?"

"A boy and a girl."

"A love story?"

"Well,--it's about a boy and a girl."

"Do they marry?"

"I said it was about a boy and a girl."

"And are they happy?"

"Well,--it's a love story."

"But all love stories aren't happy!"

"Yes they are,--if it's love."

CONTENTS

PART ONE

SPRING IN THE WORLD

PART TWO

THE ROUND-ABOUT

PART THREE

THE GREAT EMOTION

PART FOUR

THE PAYMENT

PART ONE

SPRING IN THE WORLD AND ALL THINGS FOR THE YOUNG

I

Birds called. Breezes played among branches just bursting into green.
Daffodils, proud and erect, stood in clumps about the dazzling lawn.
Young, pulsing, eager things elbowed their way through last year's
leaves to taste the morning sun; the wide-eyed celandine, yellower than
butter; the little violet, hugging the earth for fear of being seen;
the sturdy bourgeois daisy; the pale-faced anemone, earliest to wake
and earliest to sleep; the blue bird's-eye in small family groups; the
blatant dandelion already a head and shoulders taller than any
neighbor. Every twig in the old garden bore its new load of buds that
were soft as kittens' paws; and up the wrinkled trunks of ancient trees
young ivy leaves chased each other like school-boys.

Spring had come again, and its eternal spirit spread the message of
new-born hope, stirred the sap of awakening life, warmed the bosom of a
wintry earth and put into the hearts of birds the old desire to mate.
But the lonely girl turned a deaf ear to the call, and rounded her
shoulders over the elderly desk