New Britain herald., 1926-07-27
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 your mother was shining up to him and she said if he didn't leave the house pretty soon, she was going to, And l notice he's still herei" When she had gone, Merry sal very still under the lamp, thinking over what she had said. . Had Jimmy really run away because oi Mons and Mir. Hefflinger? Merry could not believe that she had. She had very little to say about MT. Hefflinger, and had been per feetly polite to him until that very morning at the breakfast table.
 Still, 1t was hard to tell what was on Jinny's mind. sometimes. For all her frankness, she did not talk much.
 But, anyway, she and Derrick were going to get married sooner or later" Merry unused, 50, what's the Idifference?"
 She shipped off piece of sewing silk, put her mending basket in or der and went upstairs to bed.
 No use to wait up for Mons" she said to herself, "She may not be in until midnight. And I've got to get my beauty sleep"
 On the nights when Merry stayed in she always went to bed early. .Lillie said there was nothing so hard on the skin as late hours, and Mer- ry listened to her advice as if she were the Oracle at Delphos.
 The door of MT. Hefflinger's room stood open the room that had belonged to Helen.
 Across the hall the door of the room that had been Cassie's stood open. too. And from if came the heavy scent of the kiss Me" per fume that Iillie habitually drenclied herself with.
 Merry turned into her own room. It was hers, now.
 Jinny's red head would never again rest on the pillow of the lit- tie bed under the south window. The military brushes that she used would soon be gone from her side of the big. old-fashioned dresser. So would the home made radio set on the writing-table.
 And I'll have the closet to my self. too" thought Merry. turning to look at the TOW of hangers that held Jinny's sweaters and short skirts
 It came to her, all at once, that she was the only one of the Locke sisters that was left! .. All the rest of them had married the men they had set their hearts upon marrying! And she. the prettiest one of the four, was still here in the shabby old house.
 .Uncalled for" she said aloud, trying to smile at herself in the mirror. But her voice broke, and there was a simmer of tears in her eyes as she turned away from the glass.
 CHAPTER XXNNlIl
 Mons took the news of Jinny s eIopcment with a calmness that sur prised Merry. She had expected Mons 10 vail and cry and beat the air with her hands.
 But all her mother did was to shrug her shoulders and look blank.
 "she and Derrick were bound 10 get married sooner or later, any way" she said, sitting on the edge of Merry's bed, late that nlGhr "and he's a nice decent boy even if he isn't much to look at. Hell make Jinny a good husband There's no doubt about that
 She seemed to forget that she had been calling him a "softy' and q silly goat" and like names for more than a year - ever since the night she had caught him kissing Jimmy out in the darkness of the driveway.
 She went to bed looking more cheerful than she had looked m weeks. X
 All the crying that was done III the house that night was done by Merry. Long after Mons and Lii- lie and MT. Hefflinger were asleep she was awake in the little room she and Jimmy had shared as long as she could remember.
 The old bookcase under the win dows still held the books ot thelr childhood - the old brown 'Llttie Women" the volume that told aboul inc "Five Little Peppers and Ho" They Grew" the works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. and two or three books of fairy tales.
 Their old dolls were in the chintz-covered box couch at the foo' of Jinny's little bed. Even the flowered chintz reminded her ol Jinnv - of the long-ago afternoon when the two of them had tacksp the covering on the old box couch. Looking at it, Merry sat up IT he'd and cried aloud, with the aban' don of a heart-broken chlld. Sht cried. not so much because Jimmy was gone as because she herself was left. She, who had had more boy friends dangling at her tlnger' ends in one year of her life thal the other three girls had ever hau IAu three of them put together - Helen. Cassie and Jimmy!
 How in the world had it happen ed? That she should be here, alone and they should all be successfullN married? None of them had eVeI been one-tenth as popular as sh' had been.
 Its Bill Erskine's fault 0 course," she figured it out for her iseld, "old dog in the manager Una he is! He doesn't want to maFf! me himself, and he doesn t wan anyone else to marry me, either! I She looked back bitterly at th' Hong weary months that Bill ha' kept her on tenter-hooks. ITS asking her to marry him, and thei jputting her off for one flimsy req Ison or another! Il was humlllatini to take such treatment from a man Humiliating and shameful!
 But it's too late to do anythins ] abopt if now" she told herself grlm