HER LOVE DREAM
NOT SHATTERED.
COUNTRY GIRL CAME TO WED
MAN SHE MET ON TRAIN.
FIRST VISIT TO BIG TOWN.
SWEETHEART FAILED TO MEET
HER; UNDER ARREST.
"I Love Him More Than I Do Myself.
Please Have That Big Policeman
Let Him Talk to Me,"
Miss Willis Said.
Ida A. Willis of Blackrock, Ark., came to Kansas City to marry James Rainwater, whom she had met on a train in Arkansas. Both Miss Willis and Rainwater were examined by Police Captain Walter Whitsett yesterday evening and are being held for investigation.
Ida, who confesses to 18 years, when she looks to be not over 15, walks flat-footed and wears neither a straight front nor a rat in her hair, is comely in spite of her dress. Her eyes have the shade of blue that appeals and when she takes your hands and asks you to help her out of trouble you feel like doing your best.
"I love him so," she said last night as she lay on the couch in the matron's office and fingered a Baptist hymnal which she had brought with her from Blackrock. "I love him more than myself. Please have that nice, big policeman who talked to me let him out of jail and send him up to see me. I want to talk to him.
"I was never in a city like this before, although I have worked in Hoxie and in Jonesburg, Ark. I never saw big buildings like you have here And I never saw a policeman half as big as the captain who talked to me so nice this afternoon and said I ought to go home to my mother. But I'm not going home until they let me talk with Rainwater, and they might as well understand that. If they lock him up I'll stay around and get to see him."
It was a case of love at first sight with Ida Willis.
"I was riding with a girl friend, Clara Lempson, on a train from Jonesburg to Blackrock last Decembr," she says. "We made a lot of racket trying to turn a seat back over, and couldn't get it to turn. Rainwater and a young man who was with him turned the seat for us, and we fell to talking. He was awfully nice, and when he asked me where I lived, I told him. He has written bushels of letters since. Saturday he telegraphed a ticket to me, and I came out here to be married.
"I didn't find him at the depot, where he said he would be, and so I went to the matron She sent me up here. There was a detective there, who said he would help find Rainwater."
Rainwater, whose first name, he says, is James, and the girl says is Joseph, has been driving a hack for the Depot Carriage and Baggage company for fifteen months. When Mrs. L. A. Shull, the depot matron, told Detective Bradley about the girl, Bradley hunted him up and sent him to police headquarters, where the girl was. Captain Whitsett met Rainwater on the stairs of the matron's rooms and questioned him. Rainwater didn't answer to suit the captain and was locked up.
Catain Whitsett telegraphed to Miss Willis's father in Blackrock last night for instructions.
