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Show J There's Only ObbU By Sophie Kerr - - - "iZT l . - : VJ oft the terrace before the low shingle shin-gle house which had been their home for ten summers. It was the last but one of the straggling village street, there was only the roadway between It and the dunes. The single sin-gle house beyond theirs was an ugly square high-elbowed thing with stiff shell-bordered walks, and a gypsy kettle, on a tripod painted a flaming red and filled with clashing magenta geraniums, beside the front door. As Anne and Rachel crossed the road this front door opened swiftly "Very fair skin, very dark hair, very blue eyes. Everything in her appearance was accented and distinct dis-tinct and yet there was a complete fusion so that her beauty stood clear and perfect She's only let's see-she's see-she's only thirty-eight years old, Rachel, now, nine years younger than I. And she's still beautiful." "How do you know? I thought you said you'd only seen her once, years ago." "Her pictures come out In the newspapers now and then, the so- -1 , might be a man s ol-'Uke ol-'Uke this," said Anne '-'-ft the flat desk where Siuslybusywitha 'KSineiUswith ' ButT, curtains and the cre-r-y an . and the china dingbats COVe TsneU" said Rachel; V stuffed two more "Jo the boxed window-!;tia8l window-!;tia8l vou think I've used "Tragic and pitiful. You must remember re-member this of your mother, Rachel; Ra-chel; she was very young and had married where she had no chance of being happy, not even ordinarily contented " fA whalls' Remember now here iast 'f ' women had spoken louder B:fl ,Larv and there was leDUvLgroomofthe b.re except tor the fur-C:; fur-C:; '-f v n the bookshelves had and e pi 3 Dendsted about to look at Bfl mr Peking "You put in the ' E S That'll surely be ;-iltwMr..Kreer.lault- ' Sou'oman!" said Rachel IJTged down the lid of the win-''-ift "Every time I see her 'Shabby sister of hers walk r i want to rush out and beat ll with my tennis racquet!" Her :!, finished, she rose and Relied her taU young slender-x slender-x i . ,1, junMva ciety columns " "They dol Oh, mother, who is she? Have I seen her pictures?" "She's Mrs. Peter Holbrook Cayne." "She's married someone else?" "Rachel, darling, I want to get through this as quickly as I can and afterward I'll answer your questions. ques-tions. You must try to understand about her. Your grandfather her father died and left your grandmother grand-mother with very little money and this child to take care of and life was very hard and meager for both of them. Uncertain, too, insecure. in-secure. Mrs. Rhodes " "But who's Mrs. Rhodes?" ! "Y our grandmother, Elinor's mother. Did I forget to say her name? I'm mixing this up dreadfully." dread-fully." "No, no, I've got it straight. My mother was Elinor Rhodes and she married Edwin Malloy." "Yes, that's right. Mrs. Rhodes did fine sewing and embroidery for her friends to help along, monograms mono-grams on table linen and that sort of thing, it didn't amount to much and she must have been very anxious anx-ious about Elinor. There seems to have been no one who took any interest, in-terest, or perhaps she was proud and shy. She kept her daughter and a little anxious man hailed them. "You be out some time, Mis' Vincent?" Vin-cent?" "I don't know exactly,, Mr. Kreel," said Anne, "but you can go in and turn on the radio." "Thank you, ma'am. There's a program offerin' a nice book of photographs pho-tographs and a tube of cold cream I am to get and if there's any new contests I want to try 'em." He explained ex-plained breathlessly and was inside their house with the last word. "Couldn't we leave the house open and the electricity on so he can have the radio after we're gone? It's so mean of Mrs. Kreel to lock theirs up except when she wants to hear something herself, I'd like to get round her somehow." "I suppose we could. He has such fun writing for samples and entering enter-ing all the contests, it's pathetic." "Do let's do it, mother." "All right, my dear, the electricity electric-ity won't cost much. And if the wt ather's very cold 'he can build a fire. I'll give him written permission." permis-sion." They had reached the beach, a half-circle of sand scooped in between be-tween points of rock which went far enough out on each side to break thp swppti nnd draff of the waves. "Mother, you're apologizing for her!" "I'm not apologizing, but I want you to understand her. I'll go on. They were married in June, 1915, and they stuck it out through the summer. Then Elinor discovered that you were coming and she was so frightened and her mother so angry that your father you see, he was young too and not the sort to face anything hard and difficult, so he ran away." "Deserted her! But that was foul!" "I think it was the best thing he could have done, he wasn't their kind, there was no way to work it out and well, anyway he went Like a good many other unsettled young men he went over to France this was before America went into the war, remember but he found a place as orderly in one of the hospitals hos-pitals and in January he came down with pneumonia. Edwin Malloy died in France and you weren't yet born. So there was poor little scared Elinor Eli-nor and her mother struggling along with hardly any money, anxious and not very well, not knowing what in the world they'd do with a child to bring up it was desperate for them all." "I can see why I wasn't wel- ESI hist- ' I,u Z35- 10,1 -WW with her and sent her to school. And one day Elinor came in with Edwin Malloy he was a young clerk in the corner drugstore and she had married mar-ried him. Now remember, Rachel, I'm simply telling you the story I heard. I never met Mrs. Rhodes. Even so, I can understand what a shock this marriage was for her. If she'd had the means she probably would have had it annulled, because Elinor had lied about her age. But she could do nothing, so she took them into their cramped apartment to live with her. And from the first they weren't happy, nothing went right. Your father was apparently appar-ently just a good-natured, good-looking boy with almost no education and no family, he made very little money, he wasn't ambitious, he wasn't clever. Mrs. Rhodes detested detest-ed him and kept lamenting the marriage mar-riage all the time, and there was Elinor herself with her beauty and her youth and her pliable unformed nature you can see them, can't you?" "Yes. It must have been tragic. For all of them." The Vincents' bathing house lay so unobtrusively back among the dunes that this little scallop shell of quiet and peace seemed never to have known man's trespass, yet it had been a favorite haven of rum runners during the latter half pf-.tbe great prohibition farce. Now t Jse days were over and the village and summer people found the larger beach below the town more convenient con-venient for bathing, so this one had come to be Rachel and Anne Vincent's Vin-cent's exclusive property, their outdoor out-door living room and extension of summer days. They sat down facing the sea, their backs against the length of pale water - washed Norwegian fir which once held the mainsail of a skimming saucy clipper. Anne, uneasy, un-easy, disturbed, made a most uncharacteristic un-characteristic fuss in settling herself, her-self, while Rachel watched her with growing impatience. "It can't be as dreadful as you're making out," said Rachel at last, half laughing, but with nervous excitement ex-citement beneath. come." Anne disregarded this. "And when at last no, I must put in a little here about Harry and me. I had gone to the hospital a few weeks before be-fore Elinor did, of course I knew nothing about her then, I'd never even heard of her. My baby died as soon as it was born, Rachel, and one of my nurses inadvertently let me know that I could never have another. So I I was very ill, I don't think I'd have tried to get well except for Harry, he was so wonderful to me, he put aside all he was feeling and just took care of me. When Elinor was brought in I didn't see her, she was put into a ward and I was in a private room, but we both had Dr. Ayres; he'd known Mrs. Rhodes in her prosperous prosper-ous days and she had gone to him and begged him to take care of Elinor Eli-nor and poured out her troubles, so then, do you see, with my disappointment disap-pointment and grief for my baby and this lovely healthy child you who who " (TO BE CONTINUED) "It Must Have Been Tragic." N -'is, pulled her white sweater down r id adjusted her belt. She watched t 'me from the corners of her eyes. a" At last she went over to the desk .id sat on the edge of it. "Aren't Anne pulled her wits together. "It's not dreadful at all, I simply don't know where to start." "Tell me her name. I don't even know her name. I've always rather hoped it was Rachel, like mine." "Oh, Rachel, darling, have you been thinking about her so much! Why didn't you tell me? I" she caught back her emotion, took an easier tone: "Rachel, your mother's name was Elinor, Elinor Malloy. She was only about eighteen when you were born, she wasn't through high school when she was married. And your father's name was Edwin Malloy. They were just a couple of youngsters who ran off and got married mar-ried without knowing one another, without thinking about it" "A sort of joke, I suppose." "Don't be bitter. They were so young, they had no idea, they didn't realize but I'll have to go back and begin properly. I never saw your father, but your mother was one of the loveliest, no, she was absolutely the loveliest creature I ever laid my eyes on. She didn't seem quite real, she was so lovely." "Was she light or dark?" fi you almost done?" 4 1 "There are ever so many more." j !' "Are you checking every item?" 1 "Yes, of course. Why don't you M take a last swim? Where's Bob? I At taught he asked you to go out in 1 ! bis boat?" Rachel swung her feet obstinately. 1 You're stalling, mother. You want i i to get away without telling me a 'ng. It's no use. Bob's gone out ' alone and I'm not having a swim. : Vou can just come out of that mess ! eggs and potatoes and cords of wd and talk- "Rachel, I've always told you thct ''hen you were twenty-one, if you " " wnted to hear or before, if there elect t' ns 8od reason" neW sit "There's plenty good reason. M jttf 're going abroad and Great-aunt cne may hang on to you for ages! ' " I stay more than six months ICYC n join me: You know that." I 'Don't evado. It's only another -'rtiU i-m twenty-one and I'm tv. '.slas mature and sensible now as V ( Ml be then, f he way you act T 11 bo Binning to Seel as if there was methmg perf,-tly rotten" a ' vlncen'.- protesting hand I W her. "ftarling, no! Don't M -J such tiling?. There's nothing . p j lcn or foul - poisonous or any i s , jr ' yur vorite bad adjec- $ iUUd0-' u-eal,y- Give you T U I . ,T'lcn why do you want to hold tJ "n me?" Ia,j;be rm a mtle jealous." 1 1 ,i ""her, darling lamb, don't be s vi Jealous of what?" h r grasp tened. "I'm H n , m iealous of your interest HA J real mother. Rachel. I'd i V l V u,not t0 think f her." 'v r T im'X think of her as my ! h t! I'' d0ra She's never thought liJ Chher ChM' that's evident f "Eh. She was glad to get rid of wasn't she?" 4f nota!an't answer yes or no; it's f 'CT1: as t." Anne con- ,, ' doublig, uncertain. If 1 Ccy,dTTy "nderStand Rachel's 1'U hav T " She "solved. "I see Pr0pS'"' ntvn , lXplain things' 1 don't ot 1,iS,; tons r r geUing strange no-na';CS no-na';CS ' so dr g doWn to the beach; ,cenzi; hc,,6" here with everything e ' linked arms as they stepped |