New Britain herald., 1926-07-17
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young lawyer. To fall in love is nothing new to Merry. who has been a flirt since the time she was sixteen. But with Tony Gaines she is really serious.
 Shortly after they meet, Tony wants her to elope with him. But she refuses to, telling Tony that she has always been so tickle that she is afraid to trust her own feel ings now. Hurt and half -disgusted, but still in love with her. Tony de- cides to wait for her for six months.
 In the meantime Merry's father dies, and Mons is left with Merry , and her three sisters. HELEN, the oldest, marries. JINNY, fifteen, stays at home to help Mons with the homework during the vacation months, and Merry takes job in LILLE DALE'S beauty shop, hav- ing failed to learn stenography.
 CASSIE, four years older than Merry, is stenagrapher to a broker named MORLEY KAUFMAN, with whom she's in love. Cassie warns Merry that Tony Gaines doesn't mean to marry her. She points out that he has never introduced her to his mother. nor given her a ring.
 One night when Tony breaks an engagement with her. Merry, in fit of jealousy. lets DERRICK JONES, a college boy who lives next door, kiss her. The next night when Tony comes, he brings Merry his mothers lovely old en- gagement ring for her. and asks her to drive over to his home to meet her. But on the way, Merry, full of remorse, tells him about Derrick. He takes her home and she hears nothing of him for days. Then BILL ERSKINE, a travelling man who's a friend of Morley Kaufman, tells her that Tony is going to Montana 10 live. Merry waits for him to come to see her, but he never does. Then one night, Mons tells her that let ter came from him. But when Merry goes to look for 1t, it is gone from the hall table. Finally Merry telephones his house and learns that he left for Montana only an hour before. Baffled, puzzled, and art-broken, she goes to bed, still wearing his ring.
 NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY CHAPTER XXI
 The next morning Merry woke up in the gray velvet gloom Of the summer dawn.
 She lay quite still for moment, idly listening to the chatter ana finkle of the milkman's wagon coming up Chester street.
 Then her eyelids fluttered open. and without a sound she stepped out on the rug in her slim bare feet
 Without sound. so as not to disturb the sleeping Jimmy, she tip- ltoed across the room and turned lthe door knob.
 There wasn't a sound In the shadowy house except low snore that came from Mons room as Merry passed it on her way down. stairs
 Cassie's gray sports coat hung on the clothes tree in the lower hall, where she had tossed it late last night.
 Holding 1t in one hand, Merry swiftly went through it's pockets with the other. But there was no letter in either of them-nothlng hut a gold box of powder and a perfumed handkerchief smeared with Iipstick.
 With a sigh, Merry padded up- stairs again In her small bare feet.
 She was far too restless to gc back to bed, so she went into the bathroom and took cold plunge instead.
 When she was dressed, she rar lightly downstairs again.
 On the wall of the sitting room was a big map of the United states that had hung there evel since Merry could remember. Sh' had hardly glanced at it for years
 But now she stood before it, ant hunted up the state of Montana Finding it. her finger paused on the star that marked the city of Bill lings-the city where Tony wal going.
 Billings, Montana" Merry mur mured aloud to herself, shaking her head in baffled sort of way
 She was baffled. It was dread ful not to know why Tony hat gone there--not even to have hac a chance to say "Goodby' to him or to give him back his ring.
 It semed impossible that he haC gone-impossible that the grea blue car would never sweep royal ly up Chester street again!
 A lump of unshed tears cam into Merrys throat, as she stoot looking at the orange-coloret square that was the state of Mon tana on the map.
 "I1l never see him again. I sup pose" she thought, never. a long as I live"
 She went upstairs, packed tn gold and pearl ring into the card board box, and slipped 1t into he handbag.
 'I'll send that back to his moth CT. anyway" she made up her minC firmly. "I wouldn't let them thinl that I'd keep his ring. What dc I want with his old ring?"
 But she took it out of her hand. bag five minutes later and put il back in her top drawer-to give Tony's ring back was like giving away a fragment of her heart.
 "I can't do it, not yet" she told herself.
 At seven o'clock Cassie's bed room door opened, and Cassie stepped out into the hall on her way to the bathroom. In one hand she carried a bottle of bath salts and in the other a large can of tal- | cum powder