V

V

Sylvester Stockton tossed restlessly upon his bed. The room, big as it was, smothered him, and a breeze drifting in and bearing with it a rift of moon seemed laden only with the cares of the world he would have to face next day.

“They don’t understand,” he thought. “They don’t see, as I do, the underlying misery of the whole damn thing. They’re hollow optimists. They smile because they think they’re always going to be happy.

“Oh, well,” he mused drowsily, “I’ll run up to Rye tomorrow and endure more smiles and more heat. That’s all life is—just smiles and heat, smiles and heat.”

The Popular Girl.

The Saturday Evening Post (11 & 18 February 1922)

Along about half past ten every Saturday night Yanci Bowman eluded her partner by some graceful subterfuge and from the dancing floor went to a po……