LITMIR.BIZ

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obligation of friendship,’ and if you made a promise and found you’d drawn a dud you wouldn’t hesitate five minutes to toss it in the river!”

      She stopped just long enough to catch her breath, but not long enough for Roger to catch his, or me mine, I’m afraid.

      “You don’t know what it is having bills pile up, and staying awake all night trying to decide whether to pay for the coal or take Billy out of school and then have your father send Karen the money because the poor child’s got in debt again!”

      Her eyes were like shooting stars. She was really lovely—a whole blazing shaft of fire. Poor Roger Doyle stood staring at her, utterly transfixed.

      “I didn’t mind—not very much—when she was going to school, but I do now. She’s just as able to get a job as millions of other girls. Even then she’s got no right to want that stock back now. It still doesn’t pay as much as she gets from Father. And why has she waited till now? She’s known it was paying again for over a year. Why has she suddenly made up her mind it belongs to her? She’s got no right to it, and she knows it, and you know it too! I know you’re in love with her—why don’t you marry her? Then she wouldn’t care whether she got the filthy stock or not! Or do you want her and it too? Oh, I hate you, Roger Doyle!”

      He stood there grimly for a moment, his lean jaw working, his blue eyes smoldering under his dark brows drawn together ominously. Then I put my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming as he took two swift steps toward her, and dropped it again when I saw he wasn’t going to strike her. He’d caught her in his arms, her clenched little fists pinioned to her sides, and was pressing his lips passionately to hers, and to her hair, and her eyes. Then just as suddenly he held her off a little ways from him, his hands still holding her arms tight to her sides, his blue eyes looking down at her shocked upturned face.

      “Don’t be a fool, Jerry. It’s you I love. Don’t you know it . . . haven’t you known the last five years?”

      His voice sounded—and his face looked—exactly as if he were about to wring her neck.

      Then he let her go abruptly.

      “Only keep your shirt on, Jerry. Just a few more days—then I’ll tell you about it.”

      He picked up his hat and was gone, without—as Lilac says—saying goodbye or good morning. I heard the front door bang and hurrying feet scrunching the dry snow.

      Jeremy Candler stood there, utterly and completely demolished, and dropped onto the ottoman, her mouth and eyes wide open, staring at the door where he’d gone, her pale face crimson.

      “Dear me,” I said.

      She moistened her lips.

      “He . . . must be out of his mind!” she gasped at last.

      “Definitely, I should say,” I replied. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to bed. Lilac will turn out the lights.”

      4

      The next morning when Lilac brought my breakfast tray she put it down without a word, not even the sort of grunt that usually means that Shiela, my Irish setter, has been sick on the hall rug. She rattled up the Venetian, blind behind my dressing table, banged down the window and demanded darkly, “What’s they done to that chile?”

      I shook my head. Lilac can’t fool me. She knows more about everything that goes on than I do, and long before. I poured a cup of coffee and took a sip of orange juice.

      “She done cry herself to sleep in there all by herself, las’ night.”

      She picked up my shoes and jammed them in the rack.

      “Oh dear!” I thought. I’d somehow got the sentimental notion that Jerry would go to sleep happier than she’d been for ages.

      “Mus’ is that devil Karen Lunt,” Lilac said.

      “Why, Lilac!” I exclaimed.

      “William, he say she’s a devil,” she retorted. “An’ he been livin’ there since he was bawn. He say the Judge, she got him wrapped up in her apron, with them blue bat eyes.”

      She stressed the “blue” as if it were a strange unholy color for eyes to be.

      “An’ her tongue sweet as butter. He say, ain’ no knowin’ what devilment she up to nex’.”

      I don’t know why I always try to defend people that Lilac doesn’t like. “She seems to me a very attractive girl,” I said. “I’m going to supper there tonight.”

      “Then you ought to be ’shamed,” Lilac replied. “—An’ that pore baby in there cryin’ her heart out.”

      She went out, mumbling and muttering. I don’t know why I put up with her, except that I couldn’t live without her. She came before my older child was born, and he’ll be seventeen before long. Sometimes her loyalties that know no shading are pretty trying . . . especially if I happen to have at the same dinner party someone she calls a saint on earth seated next to somebody who’s a devil from hell. I opened my paper, wondering myself if I really ought to go to Karen’s party. Then I heard Lilac coming back from the stairs.

      “Is that chile comin’ back tonight?”

      “I don’t know,” I said. “Ask her.”

      “She’s went, to th’ office.—Her workin’ like common trash.”

      “Don’t be stupid, Lilac,” I said sharply. “Working doesn’t make people common.”

      “Then why don’ that Karen Lunt get herself a job, ’stead of layin’ in bed till noon every day?”

      I realized I’d fallen headlong into a trap. She gave a kind of victorious grunt and closed the door, and I went back to my paper, thinking that after all it was a small price to pay for peace.

      Then the telephone rang. If I’d really thought we were going to have any peace that day, I was wrong. I picked it up, heard the operator say “Five cents, please,” heard a nickel clang at the other end and the operator say “Go ahead, please.”

      A man’s voice said, “Is Miss Candler there?”

      I said, “No, she’s not. Is it you, Roger?” And before I’d got it out of my mouth I realized it wasn’t Roger. It was a quite oily voice, and it said “Who?” so quickly and in such a pouncing way that I was a little disturbed.

      I said, “Miss Candler is not here.”

      “Where can I get in touch with her?”

      By this time, whether it was because Lilac had been so trying, or because I hadn’t had breakfast yet, or there actually was in that voice all I seemed to feel in it, I was really worried. I said, “Who’s calling, please?”

      “A friend,” the man answered. “It’s important I get in touch with her.”

      “I’m sorry,” I said. “Perhaps you’d better call her home.”

      “She stayed all night at your place, didn’t she?” the voice demanded unpleasantly.

      The nice thing about a telephone is that you can bang it down. Not that it did much good. An hour later he called again. Lilac answered. Not even my friends can get information out of her, so that was all right. He called again at eleven and twice during lunch. Some women came in to play bridge in the afternoon, and every half hour, it seemed to me, the phone would ring again, and Lilac would put her head—getting blacker each time—in the door and say, “That man callin’ up ’bout Miss Jerry again.” It got so I could almost hear that nickel clanging and hear that oily unpleasant voice.

      And you can always count on your friends to be helpful, especially when they’re dummy. Dummy on the east said, “Jeremy Candler’s a frightfully nice girl, but I do wish she’d give that old brown velvet evening dress to the Salvation Army. By the

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