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Show philosophy and poetry and hold her own. You see, she grew up in a library like this." "I'll be delighted." he said. (To be continued) . Mrs. Harry push Smith me a great service by being alive." The next afternoon he was In the library when she arrived, sitting sit-ting on the cushioned window seat, turning the leaves of an exceptionally ex-ceptionally fine copy of "Tristan and Isolde." "Allah be praised, you don't buy books for the color and their bindings!" he said. Janet stared at him critically as he talked on. He did not sound like a bum, but neither did the Earl of Jersey. Steve Hill had a sensitive mobile face, and he seemed seem-ed to have read everything worth reading and to have seen everything every-thing worth seeing and to have known everything worth knowing. know-ing. "Sorry," he said, glancing abruptly ab-ruptly at his watch. "I'm afraid I've bored you." She discovered with an incredulous incredu-lous start that they had been sitting sit-ting there for an hour while he literally charmed her with the gentle satirical flow of his conversation. con-versation. "No,'' she said, "you haven't bored me. I doubt if you ever bored anyone in your life." To her dismay his mouth twisted twist-ed with pain. "I failed lamentably with the one audience in the world which mattered to me," he said I and walked quickly away as if a lently she dropped her fork. "What are you trying to make out of me?" he cried in a tortured voice, "A gigolo?" Berenice's cheeks flamed. "It's like you to be that unjust," she said. "Has it occurred to you that after I've pounded the typewriter from nine to five I'm not exactly in the mood to be shouted at the rest of the night?" she demanded. Bill's mouth tightened. "Maybe you think I'm crazy about coming home to this sort of thing when I've tramped the streets all day trying to sell advertising?" "Is that why you're not so hot at it?" she asked stingingly. He picked his hat up from where he had flung it down on the littered desk. He did not speak or glance back as he jerked open the door and banged it behind be-hind him. Berenice stood very still, listening to his retreating steps. Suppose Bill did not come back? She had a longing to run to her mother, to hide her head in Anne's lap as she had done when a child if she had had a nightmare or been frightened at somehing. She had stretched out her hand to take up the telephone when it rang. Berenice had meant to call Anne and ask if she could come over, CHAPTER VIII Synopsis Ufo grows complicated for the children of plucky Anne rhilllps, who, by working In a department store, iias supported them since her husband's death. Her married daughter, Berenice, quarrels with her husband, Bill. Jim, Anne's son, is infatuated with the rich Helen Sanders, although Anne stis-)ccts stis-)ccts that Cathy, the widowed little lit-tle dancer in the mmrtment across the hall, in is love with him. And Janet, Anne's younger daughter, is inihannv because her well-to-do cided on exactly what furnishings the old mansion required. She had the names of dealers and prices at her tongue's end, as well as neatly put down in a slender red notebook for Tony Ryan's consideration. consi-deration. Deke had been engaged for several sev-eral days in carefully weeding out the flower beds at the sides of the Radcliffe mansion. It was work at which he could sit down' if his leg troubled him. The business busi-ness of pruning the trees and cutting cut-ting back the heavy shrubbery was left to Rufe under the supervision super-vision of the Earl of Jersey, so Deke said. "Mr. Tony knows I can't handle han-dle no scythe," chuckled Deke, "but he promised to skin me alive if I missed ary weed in these talking about, but the man who had come up behind her knew. "I've seen the skids put under too many Good Time Charlies to let that happen to me," said Tony Ryan in a hard voice. Janet turned with a little gasp. He had come in through the rear gate, Under the dark tan of his lean cheeks there was a red glow like the dusky flush of a copper vase. "I'd like if possible to have the house ready for occupancy by the twentieth of August," he said. "Please buy what you think the house needs and have them send the bills to me," he said crisply. She winced, and her old antag-l onism flared up. "The price is no object, naturally?" she asked. He gave her a curious glance. "I want the best." scale, but Mother's the only person per-son I know of in this town who could talk to you about books and friends neglect her and insist on believing she is annoyed over her old friend Gordon Kays attentions atten-tions to Priscilla Leigh. Janet is studying interior decorating and is comniissioned by Tony Byan to help hint restore the old Phillip estate, which he has bought. A negro and Englishman working-there working-there tell her of Tony's kindnesses. kind-nesses. o By the last week in July Mr. Busby was next to finished at the Radcliffe house. There were only the loose ends to be tucked in. Janet began uneasily to wonder what would happen next. She had, after considerable research, de- here flower beds. Mr. Tony can't stand nothiug sloverny." Janet's lips curled. "He expects you to earn your keep, does he?" "Yas'm." "There's nothing like being able to eat your cake and have it, too," she remarked. "I mean, it isn't everyone who can make a beautiful gesture pay." "Yas'm," agreed Deke doubtfully. doubt-fully. He had no idea what she was but May was on the wire. "Meet us down in the lobby, kid. You and Bill are riding in our car." "Bill isn't here," stammered Berenice, trying to conceal that she was crying. "We had one of our famous battles and he walked out on me." "He'll be back," said May with a hearty laugh. "Surely you aren't going to give him the satisfaction of staying at home and moping. That's exactly what he'd like." Berenice's round childish chin hardened. "All right," she said, "I'll meet you downstairs as soon as I can climb into my best bib." ' When Berenice let herself back into the apartment a little after two, Bill was there asleep on his side of the bed. She closed the dressing room door cautiously before she started to undress. Her hands were not quite steady and her eyes did not focus correctly. That was how she happened to pull open Bill's drawer instead of her own in the chifforobe. That was why she did not at once recognize the stack of neatly cut out pictures which lay on Bill's pile of handkerchiefs. The local newspaper had been running a contest for eight weeks. Each day they published a picture ; puzzle. There was a grand prize of five thousand dollars and a second sec-ond of a thousand and a third of . fin hundred and forty of five dol- horde of tormenting memories had been loosed about him. But he was back again the next afternoon. Janet was hanging pictures. pic-tures. "Nothing's lacking," she told Steve Hill, "except the portrait of my great-grandmother which is in our living room at home. It belongs be-longs here, commanding the whole house," she indicated the space opposite the wide staircase and the entrance to the library. "But nothing could persuade us to part with it." She laughed unsteadily. "There are some things you can't put on the auction block unless it's a matter of life and death. At least we've managed to eat without pawning great-grandmother." She regarded him defiantly. "A bit of maudlin sentiment, eh, what? as the Earl of Jersey would say." Steve Hill smiled. "There was a time when I thought I'd outgrown out-grown the old gods, but that's merely a phase, you know. In the end you realize that life without sentiment is a wine without bouquet." bou-quet." She caught her breath. "I'd like you to know my mother," she said, and blushed because until then she had not known she approved ap-proved of him to that extent. "Would you like to go home with me tonight to dinner? It'll be informal. in-formal. We live in a flat and we can't entertain on an elaborate Theoretically, after she had been busy at the office for eight hours, Berenice should have been satisfied to stay quietly at home with Bill at night, only it had not worked out that way. She was generally tired by five and more and more inclined to feel sorry for herself because her friends had been doing nothing all day except ex-cept play bridge or otherwise amuse themselves. She formed the habit of stopping in at one of their apartments after work. Usually Us-ually "the bunch" was together somewhere having cocktails. They encouraged her to join them. When she came into the apartment apart-ment that afternoon Bill was slamming things around the kitchenette. kit-chenette. "Hullo," he said without with-out looking up, his face like a thundercloud. "Hullo," said Berenice coldly, going into the dressing room to put her hat and gloves away. The living room needed clearing clear-ing of cigarette butts and scattered scatter-ed newspapers. "Come and get it," called Bill from the dinette. "Have you thought any more about going to the Fair with the bunch?" she asked after a while. "For Pete's sake," he protested, "what is there to think about? I can't afford a jaunt like that and you know it!" She meant to be generous, her heart was full of tenderness when she said, "I have money enough in the bank to pay our expenses to the Fair, Bill, if you'll go." He started to his feet so vio- lars each. Berenice had never dreamed Bill was .working at the contest. Yet therexwere the pictures pic-tures painstakingly puzzled out and letter in Bill's small cramped printing. Berenice's heart ached. He had secured duplicates of each puzzle so that the set he finally fin-ally sent in should be neat and legible. These were the ones he had worked from. They were almost al-most tattered where he had written writ-ten in and then rubbed out and rewritten his answers. In spots the cheap ragged paper had been worn through in holes from his patient eraser." "Oh, poor Bill!" Berenice whispered whis-pered to herself For all the pictures were torn in half and in the waste basket beside the chifforobe lay a crumpled crump-led newspaper. Berenice picked it up with shaking hands. There were the names of the winning contestants. The winner of the grand prize Beaded them all in huge black letters, the second in smaller type, the third in still smaller print, and at the bottom the inconspicuous column of forty who received five dollars each. Berenice's trembling finger ran down the list. Bill had not received re-ceived a prize, not any at all. His name did not appear anywhere on the page. Berenice felt an anguish of pity. She knew why Bill had wanted the five thousand dollars, why he had clutched at this forlorn for-lorn hope to save his self-respect, but he bad failed. "Oh, Bill!" whispered Berenice, crawling into bed beside him and putting her arm across him. But even in his sleep he flinched flinch-ed away from her. Gradually the stately old house began to take on a gracious and gleaming aspect. Worn floors and wainscoting developed a satin sheen. In the dining room a Sheraton Shera-ton table and white leather-seated chairs rested on a hand-woven blue rug. Upstairs, prim ruffled white curtains framed the windows win-dows of the bedrooms in which there were mahogany four-poster beds, slipper chairs and chintz-covered chintz-covered chaise lounges. "Almost finished," breathed Janet one sultry afternoon toward the middle of August. "The sooner soon-er I get away from here the better. bet-ter. The first thing I know I'll be breaking down and sobbing on the interloper's hearth rug." A man stood at the foot of the stairs. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to startle you." He was a slight man, thin for his height. He looked to be about forty-five and his expensively tailored tai-lored gray suit was a little shiny at the seams. "You are Miss Phillips, of course," he went on. "I'm Steve Hill, a friend of Tony's. He's done |