Bat Wing Bowles

It was a fine windy morning in March and Dixie Lee, of Chula Vista, Arizona, was leaving staid New York at the gate marked "Western Limited." A slight difference with the gatekeeper, who seemed to doubt every word she said, cast no cloud upon her spirits, and she was cheerfully searching for her ticket when a gentleman came up from behind. At sight of the trim figure at the wicket, he too became suddenly happy, and it looked as if the effete East was losing two of its merriest citizens. "Oh, good-morning, Miss Lee!" he said, bowing and smiling radiantly as she glanced in his direction. "Are you going out on this train?" "Why—yes," she replied, gazing into her handbag with a preoccupied frown. "That is, if I can find my ticket!" She found it on the instant, but the frown did not depart. She had forgotten the young man's name. It was queer how those New York names slipped her memory—but she remembered his face distinctly. She had met him at some highbrow affair—it was a reception or some such social maelstrom—and, yes, his name was Bowles! "Oh, thank you, Mr. Bowles," she exclaimed as he gallantly took her bag; but a furtive glance at his face left her suddenly transfixed with doubts. Not that his expression changed—far from that—but a fleeting twinkle in his eyes suggested some hidden joke. "Oh, isn't your name Bowles?" she stammered. "I met you at the Wordsworth Club, you know, and——" "Oh, yes—quite right!" he assured her politely. "You have a wonderful memory for names, Miss Lee. Shall we go on down to your car?" Dixie Lee regarded the young man questioningly and with a certain Western disfavor. He was one of those trim and proper creatures that seemed to haunt Wordsworth societies, welfare meetings, and other culture areas known only to the cognoscente and stern-eyed Eastern aunts. In fact, he seemed to personify all those qualities of breeding and education which a long winter of compulsory "finishing" had taught her to despise; and yet—well, if it were not for his clothes and manners and the way he dropped his "r's" he might almost pass for human. But she knew his name wasn't Bowles. There had been a person there by the name of Bowles, but the hostess had mumbled when she presented this one—and they had talked quite a little, too. She glanced at him again and a question trembled on her lips; but names were nothing out where she came from, and she let it go for Bowles. The hypothetical Mr. Bowles was a tall and slender young man, of a type that ordinarily maddened her beyond all reason and prompted her to say cruel things which she was never sorry for afterward. He had a clear complexion, a Cupid's bow mouth, and eyes as innocent as a girl's. They were of a deep violet hue, very soft and soulful, and had a truly cultured way of changing—when he talked—to mirror a thousand shades of interest, courtesy and concern; but the way they had flickered when he took over the name of Bowles suggested a real man behind the veil. His manners, of course, were irreproachable; and not even a haberdasher could take exception to his clothes. He was, in fact, attired strictly according to the mode, in a close-fitting suit of striped gray, with four-inch cuffs above his box-toed shoes, narrow shoulders, and a low-crowned derby hat, now all the rage but affected for many years only by Dutch comedians. When he removed this hat, which he did whenever he stood in her presence, he revealed a very fine head of hair which had been brushed straight back from his forehead until each strand knew its separate place; and yet, far from being pleased at this final evidence of conscientious endeavor, Dixie May received him almost with a sniff.