Blue Ruin (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill
it purely her imagination? Yet he had been critical, of her college, herself, and her way of thinking. Was she perhaps growing conceited that it hurt her to be criticized?
The long afternoon shadows were beginning to lay gray fingers over the bright meadows and draw shy veils of mystery across the more distant mountains as they came in sight of town. In the end they had to hurry. Dana left her a block from her home and started on a run, for it was getting near train time and he had to go to the garage for the car before he could go to the station.
Lynette, lingering, walking slowly with troubled demeanor, tried to shake off the feeling of depression that hung upon her like a weight. How foolish of her to let such thoughts take possession of her! It was just because she was so wrought up about getting home and being with Dana again. Tonight they would have a good talk and clear all the trouble up. Dana was all right. Of course he had not changed! Hadn’t she known him for years? Dana couldn’t change!
But her mother was waiting on the porch! She must have seen Dana go by and would be wondering what was the matter and where she was. She hastened her steps and summoned a smile. Her mother must not see that she was upset. Mother was always so keen to read right through her and pick out what was in her heart, sometimes when she didn’t even know it was there herself.
“Dana had to go to the station to meet some tiresome visitors for his Aunt Justine,” she explained as she came up the walk. “Oh, yes, he’s coming back to supper. I’m glad I got home so soon. Now I’ll have time to make the biscuits for you. No, I’m not a bit tired. I’ll love to make them! You lie down in the hammock and rest. I just know you’ve been on your feet all day. You always do on birthdays. Oh, yes, I’ve had a wonderful time, you dear little mother! And where is Grandmother? I haven’t had my birthday kiss from her yet. And Elim! Did he go fishing? I’m afraid he was disappointed. I promised him a long time ago and didn’t realize.”
She passed lightly in at the porch door and her mother looked after her yearningly. Was there a shadow in her girl’s eyes?
Well, but there was no ring on her girl’s finger not yet!
CHAPTER IV
Justine Whipple stood fuming at the east window of the big old sitting room, anxiously staring up at the street, her old-fashioned hunter’s case watch open in her hand. She seemed like a coffee pot about to boil over. In fact she had boiled over several times in the last five minutes. Grandma Whipple was enjoying it in her corner, her eyes twinkling, as she set a patch neatly by the thread under a thin place in one of the everyday tablecloths.
“There is just five minutes left!” declared Justine. “No, I’m mistaken, only four and a half. If he doesn’t come then I shall call up a taxi and go for them myself! It seems outrageous that I can’t depend on my own nephew for a little thing like that, and all because of a silly girl.”
“He isn’t your own nephew!” broke in Amelia furiously, arriving at that moment from upstairs where she had been powdering her red face and shiny nose with some powder she had bought a few days ago after prolonged study of the advertisements in her fashion magazine. She was a little nervous about appearing downstairs with it on, for Grandma Whipple’s eyes were sharp and her tongue was sharper, but Justine’s words lashed away her shyness, and she rushed to the fray in defense of her son.
“He isn’t even your own cousin!” she added viciously. “It’s a pity you wouldn’t remember that! He has no obligation whatever to come home from anything he wishes to do, silly or not, to take his own car, which he had washed and had to pay for, at your request, to go after your company! But he said he would do it, and he will! He never failed to keep his word, did he? Answer me that! Did you ever know him to fail to be on time when he promised? You know that’s one of his almost failings, to be exactly on time and no more. He says it’s a sin to waste time unnecessarily!”
“H’m!” sniffed Justine. “A sin! When he’s been wasting a whole day dawdling after a girl in the woods!”
“And you want him to go dawdling after another!” said his mother with a pin between her lips while she energetically reached behind her ample waist for the belt of her clean apron which she was preparing to pin over her best black and white voile dress. “Oh, you’re the most consistent person I know! And he ought to be late just to punish you for not trusting him. Did you ever find him untrustworthy? Answer me that!”
“Well, yes, I did!” declared Justine angrily facing about toward Amelia with fire in her eye. “Yes, I certainly did!”
“You did?” roared Dana’s mother turning almost white with rage.
“I did!“
“When?”
“Once when I gave him a letter to mail. He carried it in his sweater pocket for a whole week and wore it all out so I had to rewrite it. It was an important letter, too!”
“Humph!” sniffed Amelia with a flirt of her head turning toward the dining table and flinging the clean cloth deftly over the table pad as if the conversation had become too trivial to be worthy of her further attention.
“Ten years ago! Dana was nothing but a child then. You never will forget that. You do hold grudges a long time, don’t you? Holding a grudge against a child! And I remember that letter. I found it myself in his pocket when I went to mend the sweater. It was some ridiculous answer to a fake ad, something about removing wrinkles and making you look young again. Important! Fool nonsense! There comes Dana now! I knew he would be here on time!”
“Well, he’s a half a minute behind,” said Justine severely, consulting the watch, “and he isn’t here yet! Besides he’s got to walk down to the garage after the car. I doubt if he can make it. He better phone for a cab.”
“Justine, you certainly are the most aggravating person alive! What’s half a minute? Your watch is probably fast anyway. You always keep it that way.”
“A half a minute is a long time when one has to wait on a strange platform in a strange city,” whined Justine petulantly. “And just look at Dana! He’ll have to change his clothes. He can’t wear a sweater and a soft collar to meet my friends from New York! And the creases are all out of his trousers! I don’t see how he is going to make that train in time! And he’ll have to wash! He looks a mess!”
“For pity’s sake do shut up!” said Amelia, riled beyond further endurance. “If he hears you he won’t go at all, and then where will you be?”
“You don’t seem to realize that it is almost time for the train to be coming in now, Amelia!”
But Amelia had slammed out into the kitchen and was slatting pots and pans around in a manner that showed she would stand no more nonsense.
The old lady in her armchair cackled. She knew that Justine would not dare resent that cackle, for was not Justine expecting company who would perhaps stay the whole summer? And the small sum they were to pay for presence in the house. The old lady wondered under her grim smile why she had told Justine she might bring them there anyway? Had it been mere pity for her lonely dependent, or a desire to stir up her daughter-in-law to further good works? She was not sure. At any rate, the visit ought to be good for a little amusement for herself, and there had been precious little of that coming her way for many a long year, especially since she had been crippled.
Deep down in her heart perhaps the old lady had longed for the voice of a child in the house. “Her little girl,” had been the vague way that Justine had spoken of the offspring of her old friend. But what was this that Amelia had said about Justine wanting Dana to dawdle around after another girl? Was the child grown up? Had Amelia been finding out things?
“Justine, how old is that child that’s coming?” she suddenly asked, so crisply that Justine started and almost dropped her watch.
She carefully snapped it shut after a final