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Show Wff Vf0lette1(imball Dunn" Chapter V Synopsis After Mark Alexander's beautiful beauti-ful wife died, her whole family became ..interested ..in ..Valerie, Mark's adopted daughter. All save Shirley seemed to have their eye on the trust fund left Valerie by Ellen. They all, Dorothy, Elise and their husbands want Valerie Val-erie to live with them, but Mark will hear none of it. Despite disapproving dis-approving servants and relatives, lie takes Valerie on an automobile trip. On the way home, they help Lucy Tredway, a stranded motorist, motor-ist, who inns a traveling library. o Lucy smiled at Valerie, who instantly in-stantly smiled back. Something warm and friendly seemed to flow between them. As if Lucy would be her friend. Straight off without with-out waiting to get acquainted. Which was almost exactly what Lucy was thinking. "Well, now that's over," said Mark, "we can get down to business. busi-ness. You can see you can't sit by the road in this " "Oh no " cried Valerie. The idea seemed little short of fantastic. fantas-tic. "But you don't understand. You see I live in the Ark," explained Lucy. "The Library is only the front half. I sleep and cook and everything in the back. It's really rather sweet when you've got used to it." She smiled again at Valerie, who hung on her words. "I think this is the best plan," said Mark. "Let us take you to Allington, which according to the "Then you lose because I'm folding up tomorrow." "But no!" "You see, it never was a success. suc-cess. Not really. First, there's the Ark. It wasn't much more than junk when I bought it. It cost only fifty dollars. But has it cost me money since!" "That's the way with used cars." He spoke as if he had vast experience. She looked quickly at him, but he looked back seriously. serious-ly. "Most of the books were father's," fa-ther's," she explained. "But I hadn't counted on their taste. It's changed, you see, since father's time. I tried to get them interested inter-ested in Dickens and Thackeray. But it was no use. So I had to stock up on detective stuff. It was quite expensive. Of course, you can't blame them. Life must be pretty dull, specially on the farms. "Another thing was, I really could not take much money from them. And anyway, half of them didn't have any. It was rather sweet, the way they'd watch for the Ark, and call to each other when they saw it, and run to meet us. So what could you do?" "Nothing but what you did, of course," agreed Mark. He couldn't quite laugh, even though he somehow wanted to. "So we were just about to collapse col-lapse when you found us. Now the Ark has gone, it makes it practically prac-tically unanimous. There's a man in this town I think maybe I can sell the books to. And maybe the garage . will know a junkie who will take the Ark." "And what about you?" asked Mark. Lucy made a small-boy grimace. grim-ace. "Make myself another job, that's all. I have to work, so there must be something." "Do you like Valerie?" asked Mark suddenly. The craziest idea had crossed his mind while she had been talking. He watched her closely. Her face softened as she half smiled across at Valerie's sleeping sleep-ing face. "I love her. I don't know just why. I'm not not specially soft about people. But there's something about her I don't know what but it gets you. I can't see why it should, when she's your daughter, and I suppose sup-pose even a gold spoon hasn't been good enough for her." "But you see she's not my daughter," said Mark very quietly. quiet-ly. He even looked a long time at Valerie first to be sure she was still asleep. "She was my wife's by a former marriage. Of course, I adopted her legally and I don't think she could possibly be any, more mine so far as the way I feel about her " ,. "She adores you," said Lucy. "I tried to think up ways to make her say 'my father.' It sounds like a coronation, or something." map seems to be the end of the day's going. You can put up at the hotel overnight, and tomorrow we'll find a service station, and they can come and tow in the Ark, and doctor her up. We couldn't leave you here no foolin' ' "Oh, please " said Valerie. They couldn't have found this charming person in the breeches, only to lose her immediately. Lucy looked ont into the rain. She was thinking fast. It had been dawning on her for days that the end of the Ark was near. It had been breaking down with semi-weekly semi-weekly regularity for a couple of months, and as each repair man took a larger bite out of her small capital, he shook his head a little harder than the last, and muttered more ominous warnings. She knew Allington well. It was on her regular route. She knew the hotel, although she had never stepped foot in it. She knew Mark's name, as most of the world did, and she knew defeat, having met it before. The books might sell for enough to cover the towing. tow-ing. Maybe a junkie would buy the Ark. She had just about enough in her purse to pay for one night at the Allington hotel. She turned from the rain back to the friendliness that filled Mark's jewel of a car. "King for a day." she thought. "Well, why not?" It would be something to remember in the lean days to follow. fol-low. "It sounds like a grand Idea," she said, "and thanks a lot for bothering." Valerie sighed with relief. She cast a look back at the Ark, standing stand-ing forlornly in the driving rain. It was rather sad to leave it there alone She knew just why there were sudden tears way back in Lucy's eyes. It was almost like abandoning a child, or an animal in trouble. But what else could they do? "Valerie has a sort of maternal instinct for everything that runs by motor," explained Mark. He, put his arm around her. "You know it isn't suffering there, dear ' heart." I "I know," said Valerie. "It's! just silly. Maybe you'd better drive now. It's raining pretty hard " "Right," said Mark. "I I think I'll just climb over and sit with Lucy," she suggested quietly. j He helped her over the seat, and call it a day, and quit." Lucy pinched herself quietly. She would probably wake up in another minute, among the dusty books in the Ark. "But you don't know a thing about me," she said. "We can go fifty-fifty on that." "We can't. I've known you in the rotograves since I was ten." "That isn't anything against me," said Mark. He reddened slightly. The world's interest in his father's money never ceased to embarrass him. He was levelheaded level-headed enough to know there was little that was personal about it. Valerie stirred, sat up. Mark shook his head slightly, and Lucy understood that the conference was over. "I think I went to sleep," said Valerie. She blinked her eyes free from dreams, and looked at Lucy. "What a shame! I've missed miss-ed all this time with you!" "Maybe we'll be seeing Lucy again," said Mark. Valerie felt the undercurrent of excitement in his voice as they left Lucy at her door. (To be continued) He was looking at her now, though she realized he scarcely knew it. He seemed really looking at his thoughts. Marshaling them, reviewing them. Suddenly coming to a decision. "We can offer you a job," he said. "I don't know how good a one." Lucy jumped. It was like something some-thing falling from the ceiling into in-to her lap. She looked at him in a slight daze. "I what did you say?" she asked. "It won't surprise you when you hear," said Mark. "My wife died quite suddenly two months ago. Readjustments are well, almost al-most as difficult, I find, as the actual loss. One of them is about Valerie. She has had a an unusual un-usual training " He stopped suddenly. Lucy could see he had meant to say more. She wished she could help him, but she could only wait. "She well, I've decided not to send her back to school. But she must be educated. And she must have companionship. She seems to like you so tremendously I mean, I wonder if we couldn't pool our assets. If you wouldn't tutor Valerie." "Are you really and truly offering offer-ing me a chance at it?" "I think I am," said Mark. "Of course, I know people sometimes bind themselves to things in a first enthusiasm. I don't want you to do that. I want you to be free. You're young. Maybe you won't want to be tied down. But there'll be a home, and a decent salary, and teaching if you want it. We can try it out, anyway, and then if we don't like it, we can slid her into place, and started his engine. Through its quiet hum he could hear their voices, broken by occasional laughter. Once when he looked briefly over his shoulder, he saw that Valerie had clasped Lucy's hand firmly in her own. . They sat in the Allington lounge after dinner, talking and listening to an orchestra that came from somewhere just far enough away. Valerie thought it was all terribly exciting. It gave her a thrill to see Lucy in a dress of primrose taff-eat taff-eat that she herself had never worn. For with the plans, and the storm, they had forgotten all about Lucy's clothes. It wasn't until just as they were coming into the outskirts of Allington that Lucy suddenly remembered she had nothing to wear. "But it will be fun!" Valerie had cried. "Because I have such a lot of things my father bought me. Some I've never even worn. You see, I'm tall for my age, and you're not so very tall for yours. Oh, please '.' And so Lucy wore the primrose taffeta, which fitted her perfectly, even to the slippers. They shopped together in the hotel drug store for a toothbrush and a cake of Lucy's favorite soap. It seemed quite impossible she had known Lucy only since early afternoon. Valerie thought of tomorrow to-morrow and good-bye with a strange hurt. But she put it away, remembering that after all they were all three here now. She was afraid somebody would suggest going to bed, but nobody did. Mark just put his arm around her as she sat beside him on the big couch, and stie napped on his shoulder as he talked quietly to Lucy, on his other side. "My doings must be an awful bore to you," said Lucy at last. "They are not," he said. "I never imagined a traveling library. libra-ry. How did you?" "Oh I was brought up on books. Practically nothing else but. If my father had known anything any-thing was going on outside the covers of books, he'd have guessed guess-ed there was something phony in the way the bank was running his affairs. But of course the money lasted until he went. I'm thankful for that. And things didn't really crash until I'd finished fin-ished college. I have a simply swell education. I've even got a couple of degrees I snatched when nobody was looking." "Don't go modest," said Mark. "I'm greatly impressed. The mere sound of a degree incites me to reverence." "I haven't been able to cash in on it, though. I wanted to teach. I followed all the clues I could find. But somehow they don't seem to be using education so much right now. Anyway, I'm terribly against poorhouses, so I had to make up a job. I kept thinking about books. You'd be surprised how much people want them. I mean all kinds of people. In the country especially women too far for libraries so I decided de-cided to take a library to them." "It's a grand idea," said Mark. "I wonder nobody ever thought of it before." "Oh, they have. Heaps of times. Only not in this particular locality." local-ity." "I'll bet it went over big." Lucy looked at him sadly. |