New Britain herald., 1926-07-30
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  Illustrated y Features
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MERRY LOCKE, pretty and ga, , as her nickname, is a born fiirt She has no ambition beyond hay.
 ing good time and plenty oi
 beaux.
 At twenty, she fails in her course
 at business college, to the great dis
 appointment of AIOMS her ambi-
 tious mother. When her father dies
 suddenly she takes job in LILLE
 DALE'S nefghborhood beauty shop.
 A nice lazy job with a tiny salary
 attached to it.
 At that time she is having the
 first real love affair of her life.
 the man in the case is TONY
 GAINES, a young lawyer, who
 wants to marry her. But their en-
 gagement is broken when he finds
 out that Merry goes out with other
 men on the nights when he doesn't
 call on her. He goes to Montana
 and later Merry hears he is engaged
 to girl there. HELEN, the oldest of the four Locke sisters, marries and settles | down to have her family. CASSIE l the second oldest. marries her rich
 employer, MORLEY KAUFMAN.
 Merry envies Cassie her easy life.
 When she meets BILL ERSKINE, a wealthy bachelor, she decides he
 Is the husband for her, because he
 can give her all the things Cassie
 has, But Bill keeps putting off the date for their wedding, even after ! Merry has trapped him into an en- gagement. It is finally set for September, but in September Bill goes to Florida. Merry begins not to care whether she Hands" him or not.
 - Mons takes Lillie in to live at the house. She rents another room to MIR. HEFFLINGER. and prompt- ly begins to "act too silly for words" over him, as JINNY, the youngest of the sisters, says. Jimmy finally 1 runs away from home and marries Derrick Jones' who lives next door. She goes to live with the Jones Family.
 One night. Bill returns unexpect- edly. and finos Merry in the arms of LES PURCELL, an old beau. He | has just been breaking the news to Merry that he is married, and his wife is about to divorce him. Bill becomes jealous of him, and he and Merry quarrel. When he is gone, she has mysteries, and sobs out to Mons that she doesn't care about Bill anyway, but is heart broken about Tony Gaines. still. NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY l
 CHAPTER XLII
 Early the next morning Bill Erskins called up.
 Merry. wan and without color. was sitting at the. breakfast table irving to eat milk toast, when the telephone rang and Mons went to answer ii.
 "I won't talk to him." she de- clared, with firm shake of her lead, when Mons told her who was on the wire. T just won't - and you can tell hi mso for mel"
 Merry did not know whether Ioms was glad to break that bit of l lews to Bill or not. It was hard to ell what Mons thought about her to her.
 Sometimes she said she thought ( Bill was too old for Merry.
 Sometimes she urged Merry to marry him and settle down. I
 At any rate, he's able to take ! are of you," she would say at such $ ines. And 1t seems to me that g ou'd be better off married than unning around with every Tom, { 'ick and Harry, the way you do.n I She seemed 10 be as unsettled in S CT mind about Merry and Bill irskine as Merry herself was, r She sighed now as she came | ack fNm the telephone and sat c own at the table. ' Oh my! Oh, my, Merry." she g aid. T wonder where you're going f 0 wind up. The other girls all new just what they wanted, and D ot 1t. But you--you don't know q our own mind from one day to the t ext. Here you were, last week, tree times week. And now you fl ont even talk to him on the teIel g hone! I don't know how to figure ou out!" q Merry's glossy black eyebrows le ent up into her yellow curls.
 T don't know myself, Moms," h le admitted unhappily. T don't now what I want" She broke w f talking as Lillie opened the din- h g room door and came in for her arvation breakfast of unsweetened r ack coffee. a LiHie awas always on some diet tc : other. Her newest one was ack coffee for breakfast black tl 'ffee for lunch, and a tomatosand To egg for her evening th cal H T took off two pounds last week, fir 1t I've put it all back again." she 10 in a woe-begone voice
 she sat down at the table, and he roked her double chin with her A