The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-02-10

the right, a combination dining room and "parlor'' on the left. Her glance immediately segregated the three stalks of pink geraniums in the center of the Mexican drawn-work cloth that covered the table. Gerty, herself, in a fresh pink gingham frock, was dancing around the table to the tune of forks and spoons. It was just like Gerty to dress up to her setting, even though 1t were only pitiful water-starved bou- quet. She had often tried to analyze her s1ster-in-law'S hold on her brother ; certainly they were not happy. Was it because she made him comfortable? Was 1t the little air of formality, or mystery, which she drew around her? Her rooms when Innes was allowed to enter them were always fiawless ; Gerty took deep pride In her house. keeping. Why was it, Innes wondered, that she could never shake off her sus- picion of an underlying untidiness
 
 Gerty's processes.
 May help" The sun was still yellowing the room to her.
 "Hello!" Hardin looked up from the couch where he was lying. Innes suspected 1t of being a frequent re- treat. She had found it tumbled once when she ran over early. It was then that Gerty made it understood that she liked more formality. Innes was rare. ly in that tent except for meals now, or during her alternating week of house chores.
 q was afraid I was late" said the girl.
 Lunch will be ready in few min- utes," announced Gerty Hardin. Wont you sit down? There's the new Jour. nal. Sam came to clean this morning and~I couldn't get to the lunch until an hour ago."
 Innes, settling herself by the reading table, caught herself observing that ii would not have taken her an hour to get cold lunch. Still, 1t would never look so inviting! If Gerty's domestic machinery was complicated and pri, vate, the results always were admir- able. The early tomatoes were peeled as well as sliced, and were lying on a bed of cracked ice. The ripe black olives were resting in lake of Cali. fornia olive oil. A bowl of crisp let. tuce had been iced and carefully dried The bread was cut in precise triangles the butter had been shaved into for. eign-looking roses. A pitcher of the valleys favorite beverage, iced tea stood by Hardin'S plate. There was 8 | platter of cold meats.
 It came home to Innes for the hun, dredth time, the surprise of such a meal in that desert. A few years ago and what had a meal been2 She threw the credit of the little lunch to sulSy ! Tom Hardin lying on the portiere-cov. cred couch, his ugly lower lip out thrust against an unSmiling vision. Il was Tom, Tom and his brave men, the sturdy engineers, the dauntless sur veyors, the Indians who had dug the canals, those were the ones who had spread that pretty table, not the buxon little woman darting about in pinB gingham.
 'Is it because I don't like herr" she unused, her eyes on the pictures in the style book which had just come in that morning. Certainly Gerty did have the Datipnca of A saint with Toms hU. mors. If she would only lose that sci look of martyrdom! It was not for al l outsider to judge between a husband and wife, even if the man were her own brother. She could not put hel finger on the germ of their painful