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Show INSTALLMENT nup.-n.. . INSTALLMENT ONE Tho n i Mrs. Harry Push Smith's stories of Rainbows" she tell, of 016 Author he American family have endeared her tor'. mit 7 , newspaper edl. For HI, rv .. , thousands of readers. .'Handmade llZXXTtll 7 .- . - uaugnier. u6 mre &aa )ust 8 living. ump ahead of the bloodhounds You know there's been a depression. Or do you? Probably you think that's funny too. Dad does. Is he downhearted down-hearted because collections have dropped fifty per cent? Is he' I asK you." The young man who was manipulating manipu-lating the jack lever grinned. "He's probably having the time of his life trying to pull through by an eyelash." "He is. He's turned down dozens of brilliant offers in the past fifteen years. Offers that stood for big pay and a name for himself." "Maybe neither of those things means a lot to him." "They don't. But" she broke off abruptly. "He's aces really. He has everything. Only" she looked away, then back at him defiantly. "He could have gone to the top if he had tried." What of it?" His lips curled. "I suspect you are two of a kind. I suppose you'd rather be your own typesetter on your own news sheet than draw ten thousand a year and take orders?" "Absolutely." "I dare say if the biggest store in town underpaid its employees, vou'd Thanks," said Kathleen, and realized she had not after all succeeded suc-ceeded in doing anything to his abominable self-assurance. "Being one of these southern damsels, dam-sels, ' he went on, scowling at the sedan. "I suppose you expect any male in sight to fix that tire." Kathleen surveyed him through long curling black lashes. They were quite her best feature and she could do a number of interesting tricks with them. But the tall rangy young man beside her did not notice. "You don't need to advertise that you arrive from north of the biscuit line," she told him with what she hoped was a cutting little laugh. "We don't grow them that casual in these parts." He shrugged his shoulders. "I was warned about small-town Dixie flirts. Sorry." He grinned at her again, poking under the sedan's back seat in search of tools. "I don't suppose you have any idea where I'd find a jack to remove that tire, have you?" Kathleen made a grimace. "The car's six years old. If there was anything on it where it ought to be, I'd drop dead." "I see," he said briefly. "You are tourisg, aren't you?" she asked, eyeing a small roadster CHAPTER I Slap, bang, bumptcy-bumpl Kath-een Kath-een Maguire smothered an eloquent 'Damn." A rear tire had gone flat md was smacking the pavement vith loose rubber. It was no more han she expected. The family se-lan se-lan was on its last legs. Nothing could do it any good except to jack it up and run a new one under it. "And a fat chance there is of that," muttered Kathleen, attempting attempt-ing to steady her wabbling vehicle. But she had been hitting a smart pace and the pike was badly worn, as full of holes as the sedan's dilapidated dilapi-dated roof. With a little wheeze and a groan the car slid off into the ditch to the right and coasted gently half up the other bank where it hung, precariously poised on two wheels, in the thick tangled undergrowth under-growth of blackberry vines and dog fennel. She had been to the country for flowers. Because they were cheaper than hothouse products. On the front seat, carefully balanced beside her to keep from damaging their tender tips, was a bucket full of purple irises. She had thought It a brilliant bril-liant idea at the time. Now the bucket proceeded to upset. "It would," she muttered with a vindictive thought for the perversity of things in general. Everything lately had come unraveled un-raveled at the least excuse. Due to the sedan's perilous slant, she was wadded down in the farthest corner under the steering wheel and drenched with the contents of the bucket. There were purple irises in her hair and a spray of fern in her mouth. Even her white sports shoes squished unpleasantly when she tried to wriggle out from under the deluge, mouth. It was no time for the young man lying supine in the meadow beyond the ditch, to snigger. Kathleen glared at him, her red-brown eyes alight with furious sparks. She had never seen him before. She was sure he had no business to be where he was. Nevertheless he had the most maddening air of seeming perfectly per-fectly at home. A limp leather volume vol-ume lay near his hand. But she thought he had been asleep. His .azy gray eyes were both drowsy and quizzical in his sunburned face. And Kathleen had never seen a grin vvhich she considered more exasperating. exas-perating. "I suppose you think it's funny," Poor foiks have poor ways," Aunt Julia, the black mammy who had presided in the big kitchen on Laura s father's plantation loathed "poor white trash." Laura thought probably the old colored woman turned over in her grave every time "Miss Lolly" patched , three-year-old dress or dyed a sea-son-before-Iast slip to wear with a $7.95 model from Blumer's basement. base-ment. Laura had been a beauty as a girl-She girl-She was still at forty-three almost as pretty as either of her daughters. daugh-ters. Although she would have strenuously denied the fact There were a few silver threads in the smooth black hair above her temples, tem-ples, and laughing wrinkles under her clear topaz eyes. Nevertheless she had on several occasions been mistaken for her older son's sister. "But not today," she thought with a glance into the wavy mirror above the sink which she was trying to clear of an accumulation of soiled cooking vessels. "Do I look like a hag, or don't I?" "You don't! You couldn't!" Laura dropped a stew pan She hadn't heard Kathleen come in. "Darling, you startled me." Kathleen eyed her mother somberly. somber-ly. Laura did look tired. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I came in the back way to leave the irises on the porch. They spilled and are sort of messy, I'm afraid." Laura surveyed her daughter and giggled. "You haven't been wrestling wres-tling with them or anything?" Kathleen grinned ruefully. "The old bucket up and socked me in the eye. Am I a holy sight?" "You do look a little bedraggled. Better run right up and change." "Nothing doing. I'm helping you. I should have been here an hour ago. Only I wasn't," Kathleen finished fin-ished lamely. She had no intention of confessing to the mishap which had delayed her. In the first place Laura would worry. It really wasn't safe to risk the old sedan far from town in the state of its tires. And there simply wasn't money for new ones. Furthermore, Fur-thermore, her rescue by the young man in slacks had left Kathleen's pride considerably impaired. She had no desire to expose the painful details. But it hadn't seemed a laughing matter to Kathleen. It still didn't. She tackled the overflow of dirty dishes with a vehemence that made her mother glance at her. "Don't bother with those things, darling. Let them alone. I'll be all washed up in a jiffy." Kathleen doggedly wiped a sauce pan. "You don't like kitchen police po-lice a bit better than I do," she said in a fierce voice. "You just do it and don't gripe because you're the grandest sport on earth." Laura's firm, rather wide mouth curved upward. "Thanks for the flattery, darling." "It isn't flattery. It's the frightful fright-ful truth. Only you oughtn't to have to drudge like a slave. It isn't fair. Where's Shirley?" "Upstairs pressing my dress. And melting into her shoes, I daresay," Laura's amber eyes suddenly looked jaded. "Do try to get her to he down for an hour when you go up, Kathleen. She really mustn't look as if she'd done the family wash when her future in-laws arrive." Kathleen sniffed. "You know very well that Jaird's mother will find something to be catty about no matter mat-ter how Shirley looks. Honestly, that woman's poison ivy to me. How did as nice a boy as Jaird ever draw such a wash-out for a mother?" moth-er?" "I expect," said Laura with a grin, "if he had had his rathers, he would have chosen differently. But unfortunately, unfor-tunately, mothers are sort of forced on you, aren't they? And there's not a lot you can do about it." "None of us ever want to do anything any-thing about you." Laura laughed. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer a sweet, demure, de-mure, silver-haired old lady with all the traditional virtues? Isn't it a little lit-tle trying to have a slightly giddy mother who can beat you swimming?" swim-ming?" "You can't." "I did Saturday." "You won't tomorrow." "We'll see." Kathleen realized suddenly that she didn't feel depressed or apprehensive appre-hensive any more. And the world, her world, was no longer on edge. She glanced at Laura with narrowed eyes. Had her mother suspected that Kathleen needed to be kidded out of the blues? One could never tell about Laura. She didn't miss anything, though she seldom referred re-ferred to matters she was not supposed sup-posed to see. But Kathleen had watched her mother laugh Mike out of the doldrums without his ever dreaming she knew he had them. "Do come and look at the table," said Laura when they had the kitchen kitch-en shipshape. "Really it looks very hi-dc-ho, if I do say so as shouldn't." Kathleen agreed but without a great deal of enthusiasm. Privately she thought Jaird Newsum's mother wasn't worth all the nerve strain it entailed to give a dinner party in her honor. Even if Shirley was engaged en-gaged to Jaird, and mad about him. "It looks K. O. to me," she said. "And then some. Only that old snob will find something to patronize. See if she doesn't." Laura laughed. "I only hope no one decides to move the centerpiece. Ifs right over the darned place in the cloth." jO Bt COMWtD "I was warned about small town Dixie flirts." drawn up under a tree some distance dis-tance away. "I thought at first you must be a hitch-hiker." "I'm touring. And thank the Lord, I've got wrenches and things in my old tin can." He left her in search of these, but returned at once with a case of instruments. in-struments. Whistling under his breath, he set about the delicate task of jacking up the sedan's rear wheel without precipitating it again into the ditch. Kathleen found a small spring of water down the road and refilled the bucket. There were loads of gorgeous purple blooms still intact. She produced her compact and endeavored to repair a little of the damage. But the powder was wet through. she said. He laughed, and sat up. He had startlingly broad shoulders. "You must admit it is rather extraordinary ex-traordinary to have a maiden in distress dis-tress barge in on a feller's dreams, literally cockeyed with water lilies, or whatever those things are you're wearing for a necklace," he drawled. Kathleen colored and made a rabid rab-id effort to retrieve a clump of water-soaked foliage that was bent on sliding down the neck of her red and white sports dress. "They're irises, and they're cold and wet. And if you believe in being useful as well as ornamental," she said with a curl of her red lips, "you might lend me a hand." She saw with triumph that he did not like being twitted with the fact he was decidedly decorative. He was in fact provokingly indolent about coming to her rescue. But although he did not seem to exert himself unduly, he proved a surprisingly sur-prisingly efficient person in the pinch. Kathleen gathered the impression im-pression that he did well anything he cared to do. Certainly with a minimum of effort on his part he extricated her from the undignified position of being jammed under her own steering wheel, by the simple expedient of opening the door and lifting her out bodily. "All I asked was a hand," spluttered splut-tered Kathleen. "Don't worry," he said grimly and set her down on her feet in the shortest short-est practicable space of time. "I've no urge to clasp you to my manly bosom. If you must know, you feel like a cross between a damp garter-snake garter-snake and a very clammy frog." insist on writing it up no matter what it cost in advertising?" "Sure." "You'd love to print the truth about a dirty political deal although it offended of-fended subscribers right and left and cut your circulation in half?" "Positively." Kathleen nodded. "Yes, you and Mike are two of a kind. Have you finished?" "Yes." He stood up, brushed his dusty hands on his soiled trousers and grinned at her. "If you'll stand out of the way I'll release the brake and see if I can hoist her back to toe road." The old sedan rocked gently down into the ditch and then under its own momentum and some muscular persuasion from the young man at the rear climbed sedately back onto the highway. Gravely he deposited the irises on the front seat. "Don't get your values mixed," he said, and his voice was a little griff as if he was a trifle embarrassed. embar-rassed. "I'm not so hot when it comes to moralizing. But a fat salary sal-ary check doesn't compensate for everything. Not by a hell of a lot. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as selling your soul for thirty pieces of silver. Or thirty thousand. thou-sand. And living to hate them and yourself." He gazed at her silently. And abruptly his gray eyes were lazy and mocking again. "Your perspective perspec-tive is distorted and I can't say much for your childish tantrums," he remarked with his old exasperating exasperat-ing grin. "But you're a cute youngster. young-ster. And I guess you owe me this." He stooped suddenly. She could never get accustomed to the swiftness swift-ness of his apparently languid movements. move-ments. He cupped her round, dimpled dim-pled chin in his hand, and kissed her. CHAPTER II Laura Maguire carefully set the flaky timbales which she had just taken from the oven on the window ledge to cool. The kitchen was hot and it showed signs of a strenuous engagement. But everything was done except, of course, those things which had to be left to the last minute. min-ute. Laura fervently hoped that Hulda would not put too much flour in the cream sauce for the asparagus. aspara-gus. Hulda did her best. As well as anyone could who came into someone some-one else's kitchen at six to serve a four-course dinner at seven. Everybody Every-body in Covington who could not afford af-ford a daily maid had Hulda for special occasions. Laura, who had urgent reasons to want this particular dinner party to go off beautifully, had been up since six. There had been literally a hundred hun-dred things to do. She had gone to market herself to select the chicken and the strawberries. The house had been cleaned from front to back, silver polished, the best china and glass washed, the lace and linen tablecloth ta-blecloth and napkins dug out and pressed. The aspic salad had to be made early to leave time for cooling. And Laura had set it in small individual molds which she decorated with tiny rings of red and green peppers. It had been tedious work although she admitted the results were gratifying when she peeped into the big old ice box on the back porch. The Ma-guires Ma-guires had no electric refrigerator. They hadn't a lot of things which Laura's women friends had. She was thinking of that as she carefully arranged olives in t. slender slen-der hand-painted dish so as to conceal con-ceal the crack in the bottom which she had mended with sealing wax. A party was trouble if one had trained servants and plenty of everything ev-erything to do with. But it assumed the proportions of a major operation in a house which had to be ransacked ran-sacked to find ten crystal goblets to match, to say nothing of salad plates and forks. "And I was trying to save a three-dollar three-dollar florist's bill," she cried, throwing the vanity case as far as she could reach while she morosely surveyed a rent in one of her two best pairs of hose. He grinned at her over his shoulder. shoul-der. "Don't mind me," he said. "Go on and cry if you feel like it. Only I can't lend you a shoulder to weep on. I'm sort of hard-boiled that way." "From New York, aren't you?" she hazarded after a silence which did not disturb him in the least. She had identified the license plate on the roadster. "By way of more recent stops at Cleveland and St. Louis," he vouchsafed. vouch-safed. "You don't take life very seriously, serious-ly, do you?" He eyed her with sardonic gray eyes. "I've been fired off three newspapers in the past six months for thinking a lot of things are jokes, myself included." "Newspapers!" Kathleen laughed, a short mirthless sound. "I might have known that you're a tramp newspaper man." "You don't sound as if you thought much of me and my kind." She shrugged her shoulders. "I can tell you why you were fired. You couldn't be bothered to do dull stories that pleased the editor or wouldn't offend the big advertising accounts. You preferred to walk out if things got too tame. Or if the fish were biting. Or if the city desk cut down your pet yarn and made you pad one about some pill of a leading citizen who was a pal of the owner." For the first time she had his acute attention. "So you know something about newspaper men," he observed. "My father's one," she flung at him with bitterness. "He owns the Covington Clarion. A daily in a town of eighteen thousand people. He's owned f fifteen years. And he's |