New Britain herald., 1926-08-16

table was ruler and she slipped it | between the baseboard and the wall and went to work. Little rolls of dust, like gray mice, came tumbling out, and then, suddenly, the ruler stuck.
 Merry pulled it out and slipped it down behind the base-board once more.
 l But once more it stuck. Some thing was holding it there some- thing that felt like a wad of paper. i Al at once the ruler brought it forth from it's hiding place. It was a wad of paper. A folded wad of envelope with a tWo-cent stamp and special delivery stamp on it.
 Merry's mouth began to tremble. | Without looking ct the handwriting on the envelope she knew what it was - the special delivery letetr from Tony Gaines! The letter that had disappeared so mysteriously so long ago.
 Shaking all over she got up from her knees, and went up stairs to her own room.
 | There she opened it and read it- ' the letter that she should have read on summer night eight years ago. The letter that could have changed her whole life, if someone had not folded it up and hidden it then, be- hind the old warped base-board! Dearest" Tony had written, and Merry shut her wet eyelids as she loked at the word: It was almost like hearing his voice say dearest" close against her ear.
 | It was a minute or two before she could see again to read. through | the blinding tears that flooded to her eyes. ......
 Dearest, I am, going away in i few days. To Billings, Montana, where my fathers old friend, Judge Zimmerman, is going to take me in- to his law office. I've been waiting to hear from you. and as your mother, no doubt has told yu, I've called at the house twice. Let's not be fools any more, Merry. Let's get married now, today, and go 10 Mon tana together. TONY"
 Merry sat still, still as a statue, holding 1t in her hand. The boyish impulsive letter that the boy, Tony, had written eight years before. She wondered if the grown man, who had married in Montana, ever thought of that letter now. If he ever thought of that last night he 1 had spent here, in this town, prob ably waiting for her to telephone him.
 Suddenly, with little whimper- ing cry, she turned and flung her. self across the bed, shaking with terrible sobs. Shaken with help les grief. Crying as she had not cried for eight years, and knowing as she did it, that it was too late to cry now. "a.
 It may have heen a half hour afterWard that she began to won der who had put the letter there. where she had found it.
 It was perfectly plain that 1t had not fallen there. It had been folded twice and then stuffed down behind the baseboard. The blacRened creases showed exactly where it had been folded.
 Merry sat up, wiped her eyes, and lived over the long ago night in her memory. No one had been in the house that might but herself and Mons and Jimmy i.nd Cassie.
 Mons, of course, had not touched the letter. She had liked Tony Gaines. &
 Jimmy all at once. something that Jimmy had said that night flash ed across Merry's mind. Jimmy had said that Cassie had been looking at the letter, while she sat beside the table, waiting for Morley Kaufman. Of course, Cassie lad hidden the let teri"
 I'll never forgive her if she did!' Merry declared.
 That afternoon at four o'clock she was on her way to Cassie's big house on Overlook Heights.
 All day she had gone around the house, doing her, scrubbing, with a face like white flint.
 She sat in a corner of the street car watching two or three young flappers across the aisle. Cute young things with shingled hair and painted cheeks and bright eyes
 They're nineteen or twenty-just about the age ] was when Tony wrote this letter to me" Merry thought. holding 1t between her hands. "I wonder if he'd still like me if he, could see me now"
 She knew she vas as pretty at she ever had been. The flappers every now and then stole an ad- hiring glance tt her. For all their youth. she was better looking than any of them.
 But I've changeI." she thought