Butler High School - Magnet Yearbook (Butler, PA)

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Week’s Experience Howard Britton I was sitting in the lounging room of the club one evening last fall when my old friend Bob Merri-weather came in and made himself comfortable in a chair beside me. Mr. Robert Merriweather is quite a business success for a man of thirty-two. His own parents are dead, but he lives with a widowed aunt who gives him a mother’s care, and treats him as if he were a boy of sixteen. “Say, Bob, what’s wrong? You don’t look like yourself,’’ I said, for he was rather pale and worn. “Well, old timer,” he replied, “I’ve had a hard run. This is the first evening I’ve been comfortable for a week.” “What’s the matter?” I asked, “Trouble at the office? Come on, get if off your chest.” “No, nothing wrong at the office. It began last Monday. I came home from work and found a trunk in the hall. That looked suspicious, so I found Aunt Mae upstairs tearing a bed-room inside out, and asked her where the company was.” “The company,” she said, “will arrive about five-thirty. I just got word that my niece out west is sending her daughter here for a few days. It seems that the young lady has spent a year in some college out there, but they have decided to send her to one of the big eastern schools, and she is stopping here on her way east. You will have to entertain her, Bob, for I’m entirely out of my element with the young things.” “Man, have you ever run up against a flapper?” asked Bob. “Only when a crowded elevator stopped too suddenly, or on similar occasions,” I replied. “Well, the young lady arrived,” continued Bob, then paused as if slightly dazed. “And she was a flapper?” I asked, just to get him started again. “She was—as I said, she arrived, more or less like a cyclone, and it wasn’t long before I saw that Aunt Mae hadn’t the slightest idea as to what to do with her. We had dinner, during which Marion informed Aunt Mae and me of the various states of health and happiness of our mutual relatives. When we had exhausted that subject, Aunt Mae was distinctly