Free Rest and Be Thankful by Helen MacInnes Page B

closing theatres. She listened to the street noises, to the hum of engines, the roar of an accelerator, the protesting scream of brakes, the ebb and flow of rushing wheels as the traffic lights changed. Her irritation increased. She became angry with her own weakness.
    She found herself wishing she had Jim Brent’s independence: he didn’t give a damn for anyone. Then she found herself smiling as she thought of his probable comment on some of the prize exhibits in Prender’s circle. That cheered her up considerably. In a way it would be amusing to see Prender Atherton Jones trying to dominate Wyoming.

7
ONE TO GET READY, TWO TO GET STEADY...
    Everything, Mrs. Peel decided, was most satisfactory. She hadn’t had so many arrangements to make since her summer on the Dalmation coast in 1938. The house was almost ready for the invasion. The invitations had been sent out, and six writers had definitely accepted them. Additional help had been engaged. Friendly relations had been established with the storekeepers in Sweetwater, who were relieved to hear that the new owners of Rest and be Thankful weren’t going to order staples from Omaha or Chicago. A Mr. Milton Jerks had announced he could provide gasoline, a car, souvenirs of Sweetwater, a laundry, a Piper Cub, and movies changed once a week without fail. And all Sarah’s purchases in New York had turned out well, except the skiing underwear, which preferred to stretch. The new books were added to the shelves in the study, which now could be called the library. The radio-phonograph and records were installed in the large living-room for the use of their guests. The small sitting-room with the glass-enclosed porch would be their own retreat. (Even in her exuberance Mrs. Peel felt that retreat might sometimes be the better part of valour.)
    Prender Atherton Jones had not yet announced his arrival. In fact, he had not even answered Sarah’s letter, sent by special delivery just before she left New York.
    “I wonder when he is coming,” Sarah said, as she helped Margaret put up some pictures in their sitting-room. With magazines and books, flowers from the garden, where delphiniums and hollyhocks grew wild, and the little personal knick-knacks (with which Margaret always travelled as insurance against bleak hotel bedrooms), the small room was becoming definitely their own. Now the pictures (reproductions from the Museum of Modern Art) were being inspected, judged for size and colour to suit the shapes and lighting of the three available walls.
    Neither of them had mentioned Prender for almost an hour, but Mrs. Peel, as she stood back to frown at a picture, could answer, “We’ll have a telegram any day now.”
    “Perhaps we ought to have told him how to reach here.” Sarah felt that the responsibility somehow would be hers.
    “He never asked us. Besides, it is all quite simple. First, you take the big ’plane to Denver, and then the little ’plane to Sweetwater. Then that very efficient Milton Jerks sends you here by car.”
    “He may not fly.”
    “Then that, darling, is his problem. There are such things as information-booths in New York’s stations. Now don’t worry about Prender. Why, anyone would think you really wanted to see him arrive.”
    “I’ve been hoping for a telegram that said he couldn’t come.”
    “You do jump from one extreme to the other, Sarah. After all, if he wants to come here, then that is that. We cannot offend him, you know.”
    “Why not?”
    “Sarah! You know we’ve never antagonised anyone! Except those Nazis in Paris. And then it did annoy me that we had to do it so secretly. Besides Prender isn’t a Nazi: he’s so much the opposite politically. You know how advanced he always is.”
    “Yes, that makes him sure he is intelligent.”
    “Sarah, what has come over you? I’m sure that when you met Prender in New York you must have been so exhausted by all that shopping that you became a little bit fretful. Now, you know you