New Britain herald., 1926-08-09
out on your piano."

out on your piano."
 Mons got up and bent over her. Merry, you've been drinking!" she cried accusingly. No wonder you're talking like this. Come on, now. Get up and I'll help you upstairs to bed! What have you had to drink?"
 But Merry pushed her away with q weak little movement of her hands.
 1 T haven't had much to drink. Moms,' she said, shaking her head and closing her eyes wearily, mot as much as you think Eve had. I'm really pretty sober.' But Mons insisted that she go to bed, and so finally she went. Dimly she listened to her mothers voice, going on and on about the evil of drinking strong liquor.
 Its wrong for anyone to touch it." she was saying, while Merry slowly and clumsily undressed her self. "1ts bad enough for a man to drink. but how much worse for a woman! There's nothing on earth so low as a woman who drinks"
 Merry paid no attention to her.
 Her tired brain kept repeating: "I was too old for that young kid tonight. He thought I was too old for him. Think of it! Me! Too old for him! Think of it!'
 At last she was in bed, the lights were out, and the room was silent. She slept as soon as her head touch- ed the smooth coolness of the pillow.
 It may have been three or four hours afterward that Merry woke up.
 The house was perfectly still and the curtains at her bedroom win dows swayed back and forth like ghosts in the soft air of the spring night.
 She lay there for a moment idly watching them. Then she swung her feet out of bed, and slipped into her kimono.
 She turned on every light in her room, locked the door and walked over to her dressing table.
 The mirror gave her back the re- flection of her face, the soft purplish shadows under her eyes, the tired droop of the lovely mouth, the whiteness of it.
 Then she thought of Jinny's face that night under it's tiny green sports hat. She thought of the faces of the three other girls in Jinny's party. The pert pointed faces with the unmistakable stamp of extreme youth on them.
 Why, I'm old compared with them!" she knew. suddenly. Girls nowadays started to be grown women at fifteen or sixteen. Almost before they were out of the cradle they were in the cabaret painted and slangy and poppy" Pep!-that was the great thing for a girl to have these days. Pep and youth. short -skirted and brazen- tipped! ...
 Compared with sixteen, twenty two really WAS old. Merry sighed as she realized 1t, and switched off the lights.
 She was back in bed, wondering whether she had gumption enough to get up and cold-cream her pallid face when she heard an automobile coming up the street.
 It came nearer and nearer and then with a little rush it seemed to turn in at the driveway before it stopped.
 Once more Merry was out of bed in her bare feet. She ran across the room and peeped out of the window. There in the moonlit driveway stood Cassie's new Rolls car and getting out of it was Cassie, herself! She had a bag in one hand and leather hatbox in the other!
 "Sst!" Merry hailed her, and then called in low voice, "I'll be right down!"
 She slipped into her little, pink felt slippers, and battered down through the darkened house to let her sister In. AS she reached the bottom of the stairs. the cuckoo clock in the dining sang out that it was two o'clock!
 Two o'clock! What on earth was Cassie doing, coming here at two o'clock in the morning?
 "1'll bet hat she's left Morley!" Merry thought excitedly as she opened the front door, and let Cas- sic into her mothers house.
 (TO BE CONTINUED
 Cassie gives Merry some infor- nation which greatly surprises her in Chapter LII of "The Peter" to- morrow.