Free GI Brides by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

good and did what their mother told them all the time she was gone. Then catching up her hat and coat from the chair where she had deposited them five minutes before, she hurried out of the house, resolved not to listen to Elaine’s frantic calling. It was the only way! She was sure she was right. They could not go on without money, and the only way she could make sure of that was to keep this job that she had been so happy over only yesterday. Maybe it did seem heartless to her sister, but if Elaine had no money,
somebody
must provide it, and she knew by experience that there was little hope of her getting a job in this vicinity.
    And Elaine, convinced at last that it was useless to scream for her sister, rose from her bed of illness, dressed her hair in the most approved style, made up her face with just enough blue shadows under her eyes to look like an interesting invalid, put on a ravishing negligee from her suitcase and a pair of charming slippers, manicured her nails carefully, and went downstairs. She placed herself becomingly on the old couch in the living room that had seen so many years of hard service in the family. Then she called Angelica to her and instructed her to go across the street to Mrs. Wilson’s house and ask if she would kindly call up the number written on the slip of paper she carried when she went to do her marketing and ask Mr. Thomas if he would come out and see her at once about important business. Elaine was not one who ever allowed the grass to grown under her feet, and would not be stopped in her endeavors by a mere illness, no matter how dramatically it had been built up.
    Angelica was like her mother. She entered into the importance of being trusted with such a message and went on the errand with avidity. But she soon returned with the news that Mrs. Wilson wasn’t at home. The neighbors had said she had taken a defense job, so Miss Angelica had tried other neighbors, who each in turn examined the bit of paper with its unknown numbers, and asked several curious questions. Just one finally volunteered to send the message, but came back to the child after she had done so in high dudgeon.
    “Say, little girl, was that lawyer you wanted me to phone Bettinger Thomas, do you happen to know?”
    “Why yes,” said Angelica importantly. “I guess it was. I heard my aunt and my mother talking about him and they called him ‘Bett’ Thomas. They said they used to go to school with him.” Angelica always enjoyed repeating important information.
    “Well,” said the helpful neighbor, “if I had known that I wouldn’t have stirred a step to send that message. You can go back to your mother, little girl, and tell her that man isn’t fit for her to speak to. Tell her her mother wouldn’t have allowed her to send for him if she had been alive. Mrs. Kendall was a good woman, and she would be horrified to have that man allowed to come to her house. Your mother has been away so long she probably doesn’t remember how her mother felt about him. Or maybe she never knew how her mother felt.”
    “She wasn’t her
mother
,” said the Angel pertly, “she was only her
step
mother, and stepmothers don’t count!” said the child, tossing her dark curls saucily and flouncing away from the neighbor. She hotfooted it back to her mother to report.
    “You mean they had the impertinence to say that to
you
?” asked Elaine furiously. “My word! What are we coming to when the neighbors around here would dare to send
me
a message like that! Well, you can just go straight back and tell those old busybodies that they don’t know what they are talking about. You can tell them that I’ve known Bettinger Thomas for years, and I trust him thoroughly, and they better look out saying things like that about him. He is a smart lawyer, and when he hears that he’ll certainly get it back on them in some way that they won’t like. Being a lawyer, of course, he knows how.”
    So being a smart child and obedient