New Britain herald., 1919-09-09
WY HEART and MY HUSBAND ADELE GARRISCN'S NEW PHASE OF
 Revelations of a Wife

:, but had heard quite enough. l'8t hard work to keep my knees from sinking with my weight as reall"e' that not only was Kenneth oloch- bridges name being coupled with the cause of his Wifes death, but that the teachers working with him were be- ing mentioned odiously in the same connection
 What Mrs. Stocl>bridge's Relatives Told Alice Holcombc. Early as il was when l reached the schoolhouse, Alice Holcombe was before me. As | turned into the flower bordered walk leading to the buildings, I saw her fitting her key into the door. I called to her, and her troubled face frightened percep- tibly as she turned and saw me. She finished unlocking the door, threw it | open, then hurried down the walk toward me.
 You dear' she said gratefully, ito come so early. We'll have the place to ourselves, and I've so much to tell you. The doors won't be officially opened for the teachers for a half hour yet, and the janitor is over in the other building."
 
 at all?" l asked solicitously. You don't look as if you had slept much.' The comment was not an idle one.
 Her skin was palid, lifeless, while her eyes though burning with excitem ent, seemed to have reCeded far back into her head.
 "Sleep!" she exclaimed mournfu}lN. "I don't believe I shall ever know a S1 in I counting every minute, that I must have dozed fitfully about three-quar- ters of an hour last night And even those poor. snatches held such terrible dreamS-'
 \ Frank Talk. She broke off abruptly, shudder!rg.
 I began to wonder nervously whether
 she was about to break down com-
 pletely, leaving me with the Bayvew school affairs depending on me alone,
 when she pulled herself together.
 "Don't worry," she said crispN.
 Pm not going to pieces. Kenneth
 Stocl<brdge needs the best efforts of
 every friend he has Did you hear
 any comment on your way doWn?'
 She had unlocked the door of the
 principals office, entered and thrown
 up the windows as she talked. At
 the last sentence, abruptly separated
 from the others she turned to me
 with a searching look. I flushed, hes
 itated, then took a firm grip upon my
 cOmm on sense.
 T am going to tell you exactly what I heard," I said, "in the very words
 that were used. You may draw your own conclusions"
 I repeated the vulgar comments I 1 had heard at the railroad station. Alice Holcombe listened frowningly. 'That's just it." she said as I fn- ished with the apprehensive words of the woman who had chded her es-
 cort for his outspokenness, "tney
 don't know anything, but they are
 all willing to damn an innocent man
 with the yilest specuations. And they're all talking. The village is
 sizzling with it. I heard lot of it
 on my way over this morning."
 Mere talk won't hurt anything but
 his feelings" I commented banally enough, but I was really at my wits end for the right thing to say in the
 peculiar situation. Alice was so sen- sitively alert 10 any comment which could possibly be construed as un- favorable to Mr. Stockbridge that my :! conversational way was hard to pick ''If it were only talk" she retorted
 But Milly's family are doing more than talk. They got permission to , take her body to their home last night, after the coroner had taken a look around, but they did not ask Kenneth there, and he spent the night at his own house-ima gine!" ''rThey Told Mo- Are you sure?" I asked. startled, for that state of affairs looked like serious trouble.
 "They told me themselves" Why. When did you see them
 It was almost II o'clock when we left
 you at your door,
 ''I know it, but Milly's sister had left a message for me to come direct
 ly to the house as soon as I reached there. Of course. l was Milly's, as we'll as her husbands, oldest friend. but 1t looks to me as if there was som mething more than that in their
 minds when they asked me over-as if they were trying to make sure that | I would be on their side instead of his in any controversy which might come up"
 'What did they say to you?" I | asked, to avoid commenting upon the conclusion which she had drawn and
 with which l secretly agreed. They said enOugh!' The careless phrasing was unlike Alice Holcombe, as was the vindictiveness with which she spoke, but I knew that the girl was hardly responsible for anything she might say, so terrible was the strain which she was undergoing. The principal information they handed out" she went on, was the