OCR Text |
Show 0 Mc Cuire W.N.U.S envied i-J INSTALLMENT FOUR The Story So Far The Magulres are giving a dinner for the Newsums. Shirley Maguire and Jalrd Newsum are engaged but Mrs. Newsum would like to see her son marry Connie Mays, daughter of Cov ington's wealthiest citizen. Mike Maguire Ma-guire Is a happy-go-lucky editor and mayor of the town. Kathleen, younger daughter, is furious at Mrs. Newsum's patronizing airs. A stranger had helped fix a flat tire for her and kisses her. He tells her he is a newspaper man out of a Job. The first to arrive for the dinner are Laura's son. Tom, and his wife, Mary Etta. camellias on a bosom that was already al-ready overshelved. "How do you do, Laura? How very pretty you look," murmured Mr. Blake Newsum while his wife stiffened. stiff-ened. It was not an auspicious opening as Laura knew. She wished the gentleman gen-tleman would keep his gallantry at home. But Jaird's father was never one to catch nuances. He beamed on Shirley and from her to Jaird who had taken Shirley's hand was looking look-ing down at her wih an expression that for a moment made of her heart a delirious singing bird. "Handsome couple," murmured Mr. Newsum. "I always said so." His wife gave him one of those looks meant to drop a husband in his tracks. And Laura nervously flung herself into the breach. "What a perfectly charming dress, Belle." "Do you think so?" murmured the lady, slightly mollified. "Who could help it?" contributed Tom, back-stopping for Laura. Mrs. Newsum was making like a ship in full sail for the love seat in one corner of the room. It was the most uncomfortable piece of furniture furni-ture in the house and unless sat in at just the right angle it had a horrifying horri-fying trick, due to weak underpinnings, underpin-nings, of closing up under an occupant. occu-pant. It really should have been relegated to the dust heap weeks ago, only there just hadn't been any- FlflHIPllJ J fF"! CHAPTER V Mary Etta was already moving into the living room. Laura put her hand on Tom's arm. She did not mean to detain him more than a minute. Mary Etta was suspicious of private conversations between her husband and his mother. She had been determined when she married not to be "mother-in-lawed." "Isn't business any better, Tom?" asked Laura. "Better I haven't made enough this week to resole the shoes I've worn out." "I'm sorry." "But Mary Etta's raking it in, so I should worry." Again Laura winced. But she said nothing. Because there was absolutely abso-lutely nothing to say. And Mary Etta was already glancing toward them with narrowed eyes. According Accord-ing to her philosophy, a man's mother moth-er made trouble between him and his wife if she could. Mary Etta was exactly like a prickly cactus. Ready to stab at the least excuse. She was determined to have from life exactly what she demanded of it. And yet in spite of her clipped efficiency, Laura had occasionally glimpsed something in Mary Etta's defiant black eyes that resembled panic, absurd as that seemed in connection con-nection with her. She was private secretary to Harvey Har-vey Cobb Leigh, one of the most powerful cogs in state politics. He was also a contractor in a big way. And he accumulated money with very few scruples about honesty. Mary Etta had gone straight from a business course in high school into his office. She had brains and she could keep her mouth shut. When she married Tom she was already al-ready handling most of her employer's employ-er's private correspondence. Tom had not wanted her to go on working. Mary Etta had pointed out the folly of doing anything else. She was earning almost as much as Tom in the big real estate agency where he was learning the business. He planned to start for himself eventually. But, as Mary Etta said, he lacked capital. She saw no reason rea-son why they should skimp along on next to nothing when she could drag down a monthly salary check. So she didn't resign. And she announced an-nounced that she did not intend to until Tom's earnings took a decided turn for the better. Unfortunately they traveled in the opposite direction. The depression knocked the bottom out of the real estate game early. From being on a fairly decent salary, Tom was reduced re-duced to a strict commission basis. This during the past year had all but dwindled to a thin mist. There was no longer any question of Mary Etta's resigning her position. For months Tom had been coming to the point where he could contribute nothing to their common expenses while Mary Etta's salary continued to increase. Laura knew the situation situa-tion was blistering Tom's sensitive male pride. "Oh, hello, Shirley," murmured Mary Etta as her husband's older sister appeared in the doorway. Mary Etta did not care for Shirley. Shir-ley. She bluntly said that she thought Shirley belonged in the lavender lav-ender and old lace school. But Kathleen Kath-leen got on better with her sister-in-law. Mary Etta held Kathleen at arm's length as she did all her inlaws. in-laws. But she did not take it as a personal insult if Tom asked Kathleen Kath-leen to look them up when she was in town. Mary Etta herself never proffered such an invitation. Of course she worked and she and Tom had only a one-room efficiency in an apartment hotel and took most of their meals out. But, as she bluntly explained, it wasn't that. Mary Etta just did not propose to be used as a convenience by her husband's family. fam-ily. Kathleen, eyeing her brother's wife, wondered as she had before how Tom ever came to fall in love with anyone who made such an art of being thoroughly unpleasant. Privately Pri-vately Kathleen thought Tom was getting fed up. And she didn't blame him. He looked as if he had been on a steady diet of cockleburrs. "Hello, Kits. Gunning for big game?" he asked with a grin. Kathleen made a face at him. "It all depends on how you feel toward Mamma Newsum," she said, then squeezed his arm. "Sh! Here they come. My sainted cow, doesn't she look like Mrs. Astor's pet horse?" The Newsums were just emerging emerg-ing from their handsome closed car. Jaird gave his mother his arm. Shirley, Shir-ley, looking out the window, felt the little wayward jerk which the sight of him always gave her senses. He was probably in no way extraordinary, extraordi-nary, but he always seemed so to her. Just Jaird with his clean-cut profile and steady blue eyes, yet he represented all of heaven and hell to Shirley Maguire. His mother was mincing along in evening slippers that were a size too small. Her gray chiffon gown was expensive, but she could be depended depend-ed on to spoil the effect of any coscume by adding a jarring note. Tn this case it was the huge pink Kathleen slid out the door. At breakfast Laura had been impressive impres-sive about the solemn significance of the occasion. But Mike was just as likely as not to forget to come to dinner when there were guests. But to her relief as she came down the hall Kathleen heard his voice at the rear. He usually came in the side door because there was a short cut across a vacant lot that saved time from his office. "Dad!" she called imperiously. "Don't you realize you've only ten minutes to make yourself presentable?" presenta-ble?" She jerked open the screen door as she spoke. She meant to chase Mike up the rear stairs as quickly as possible. Only it wasn't Mike into whose arms she catapulted. "Oh!" cried Kathleen. "Exactly," grinned the black-headed black-headed man In faultless white flannels. flan-nels. "Kathleen," beamed Mike Maguire, Ma-guire, "this is Ritchie Graham, a gentleman and a scholar after my own heart." Kathleen stared into the sardonic gray eyes of the irritating young man who had rescued her from the ditch and kissed her and laughed about it. The man she had most ardently desired not to see again. "I've brought him to dinner," announced an-nounced her father with triumph. "I hope It is all right, Miss Maguire," Ma-guire," murmured Ritchie Graham. He was grinning. He knew she was furious. So did Mike. And they both laughed. They were undoubtedly undoubted-ly soulmates, thought Kathleen with helpless rage. Even though they did not look a lot alike. Mike was almost al-most as tall and lank as his guest Only he was fair. He had a thin, clever, boyish face, blue eyes that were irrepressibly gay, and a droll mouth. His crisp russet hair was lightly grizzled at the temples. He was forty-five, but he carried off his years as insouciantly as he did everything ev-erything else. "I suppose both of you would go into a decline if I said it isn't all right. Like Ned you would," growled Kathleen. "Do come in and stop cluttering up the door sill." Mike sniggered. "Don't mind the kitten's claws," he admonished his companion. "She only scratches those she loves. Come up to my room, my boy, while I slick down these old gray locks." Kathleen stood at the foot of the stairs and glared after them. How on earth was she going to tell Laura that, as usual, Mike had spoiled everything ev-erything by one of his preposterous gestures in behalf of a perfectly strange man who had no earthly business to have precipitated himself him-self into an already overstrained situation. CHAPTER VI As a matter of fact, the crisis resolved itself without fatalities. It was exactly like Mike to sow dragons' drag-ons' teeth and reap love apples. Just as Kathleen was turning back to the living room the telephone rang. "Kathleen?" Alex was speaking and his voice was a trifle thick, a bit inclined to run up the scale at the end of words. "Tell Mother I can't make it for dinner." "Alec! How could you?" "Sure. I'm a rat to do the runout run-out when she's staging a family shindig. But that's how it is. And you can't do anything about it. So take the air." "I'm not talking about that. You know what I mean." "Do I? What of it? You don't need to tattle to Mother, do you?" "Don't worry. I shan't. She still thinks you are worth getting all hot and bothered about." Kathleen soberly replaced the receiver. She and Alec had fought from the time they were both in rompers. There were less than two years between their ages. To the casual observer they seemed always at the point of mayhem. Actually they were tremendously tre-mendously fond of each other. And Kathleen, although she had no intention in-tention of telling Laura so, was heartsick about Alec. He had been drinking. That was why he was not showing up for dinner. That meant he had been somewhere with Myra Boone. "Darn cradlesnatchers with blon-dined blon-dined hair and motheaten morals!" muttered Kathleen under her breath. She couldn't see how Alec could go that sort of thing. It was such a pity he had to finish school the year brand new electrical engineers were a drug on the industrial market. Alec was a bundle of nervous energy. ener-gy. He was better suited for anything any-thing on earth than idleness. Mike had tried to find him something to do on the newspaper. But Alec hated it He was created to make things happen, not to write up the exploits of others. With no outlet for his dynamic dy-namic desire to make the wheels go faster Alec was, or so it seemed to Kathleen, cooking up a merry little hell all his own, aided and abetted by the worldly Mrs. Boone, a wealthy divorcee thirteen cars his senior. i (TO BE COTI,UKP' Mrs. Newsum was making like a ship in full sail for the love seat. thing to fill up the wall space. So Laura had trusted to luck and pushed it back into the most inaccessible inacces-sible corner. Only of course if there was any weakness in the enemy's armor, Belle Newsum could be trusted to discover it. Laura had a horrible vision of Jaird's mother being be-ing precipitated into the middle of the floor and refusing to trust her weight again to anything in the Maguire Ma-guire house. But Kathleen caught the storm signal and acted. "Dear Mrs. Newsum," she exclaimed ex-claimed rather breathlessly, "what do you think of the plans for the June fete?" Quite dexterously she interpose her slim self between the lady and the point of collapse. Mrs. Newsum, delighted to be allowed to tell about the very important committee of which she was a member, permitted herself to be ensconced in a substantial sub-stantial wing chair. And Laura sighed with exquisite relief while Kathleen winked at her over the guest of honor's elaborately marcelled mar-celled head. "Shirley," whispered Jaird in a voice that was not quite steady, "do you remember that you were wearing wear-ing blue the first night I kissed you?" Did she remembeV? Shirley looked down at the soft clinging folds of her blue lace gown. She looked stately and a little aloof. Like a girl in a painting. Very cool and remote. re-mote. And not quite real. But inside in-side she was a cauldron of seething emotions. Did she remember? Her heart sobbed. It said all sorts of frantic things. But her lips only smiled very faintly. "Yes, I remember," said Shirley as if it did not matter. Jaird looked white and baffled. Laura, under the cover of Belle Newsum's tiresome monologue on her own prominent connection with all prominent social functions in Covington, managed to whisper to Kathleen. I "Where on earth do you suppose your father is?" Kathleen spread her hands hope-1 hope-1 lessly. "Heaven alone knows. Want i me to see if he can be located?" "He's got tote," groaned Laura. "Hulda can't hold dinner forever." |