New Britain herald., 1926-08-17
THE PETER s' s'.,:: :;:';;f; ] i;; = s:.s: ::..s - ~ ~~~ - - "A A @@A "a
READ THIS FIR ST.

!
 | Merry Locke. pretty and gay as her name, is born flirt. The kind
 of girl who has no ambition beyond having a good time and plenty of ibeauX.
 At 20 she fails in her stenographic course, and takes a job in Lillie Dale's little beauty shop at a small salary. At that time she is having the one real love affair of her life. The man in the case is Tony Gaines, a fine young lawyer who wants to marry her. Their engagement ends when Tony finds out that she is go- ing around with other men and let ting them make love to her. After several weeks of silence, Tony sends her a special delivery letter. Before she has a chance to read it, it mys- teriousy vanishes from the hall table. She accuses her older sister, Cassie, of taking it, but Cassie denies it. A couple days later. Merry hears that Tony Gaines has gone to Montana to live. She tries not to care.
 Cassie marries her rich employer, Morley Kaufman. Then Mons. Mer- rvs widowed mother, takes Lille Dale and a Mir. Hefflinger, into the house as boarders, to help make both ends meet. A year later she marries Mr. Hefflinger. Jimmy. Mer- rvs youngest sister. elopes with Derrick Jones, who lives next door and goes Ii live with his parents
 Through Cassie Merry meets Bill Erskine, a wealthy bachelor. She becomes engaged to him, although she is fond of him in only a luke warm fashion. But Bill keeps putting off the wedding. and when Merry gets tangled up in the divorce case of Les Purcell and Nonie, his wife, l Bill drops her like hot cake and l marries another girl
 Merry begins to wonder. as she | loses one man after another, what | is wrong with her. Morley's sister, | Muriel, tells her one day that she is too "easy"-that too many men know she is the kind of girl that a man makes love to. but never mar ries. Merry wonders@if this can pos sibly be true.
 She hears that Tony Gaines has become engaged to a girl in Mon- tana-a niece Of his law partner, Judge Bannerman. As the years go on, she supposes that he has mar ried her and settles down to the ad- miration of one man, George Leet, l at last. On her twenty eighth birth | day. while she and Mons are house. keeping, Merry finds Tony's long l lost letter - proposal of marriage, | written just as he was leaving for | Montana, years before. Sure that | Cassie hid it from her. she starts off | to Cassie's house with it.
 (NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY) |
 CHAPTER LVIII
 Cassie was giving a party that | afternoon.
 The big luxurious house was fill eS with the sound of women's chat ter. As Merry stood waiting in the hall, a maid hurried past her car rying a huge silver tray of sand wiches.
 Through the open door that led into the living room Merry caught | a glimpse of Cassie, herself in pale | green silk, bending over a card table.
 A minute or two later she came out into the hall. There was 8 pug zled frown between her eyebrows.
 Hello, Merry" she greeted her young sister. You wanted to see me-"
 Merry nodded uncertainty. Now that she was here, she wished that she had not come.
 She had not seen Cassie in months. and suddenly it seemed to her as if | Cassie were not her sister, but a stranger.
 For Mrs. Morley Kaufman, these days, was a hard, glittering, ex- pensive parsonage who looked as if she had been born with a gold spoon in her mouth. She did not look, as if she had ever seen the little house on Chester street.
 And, as a matter of fact. she had almost forgotten the little house and the old ty ewriting days of her past. She never came near her family, un- les1 she and Morley happened to be having trouble.
 ''I'll tell you what you'd better do," she said now, unsmilingly. You'd better run up to my room and wait until all these people have gone. It won't be more than half an hour" !,
 She spoke to Merry as if she were a delivery girl, or new f. Seemingly, it never oc- cured to take her own sister back into the roomful of women and in l troduce her to them.
 "You'll find some magazines up there on the table beside my bed" she added lightly, and turned to go back to her guests. Az Merry started up the stairs, She waved a elland at her and vanished.
 "She might have asked me to have a cup of tea, at least" Merry bitterly, as she climbed the stairs to the second floor.
 It was six o'clock before Cassie finally came to her in the primrose and white bedroom that overlooked the broad lawn before the house. A room that was like q jewel-box, h scented with perfume, fairly padded with silk cushions and draperies, and all a-glitter with gold-backed Ii brushes and bottles. The kind of room that almost every girl on dreams of owning and that one in ten thousand manages to get for herself!
 Cassie was the one girl in ten thousand. She had made up her mind to get the luxuries she crav- ed, and now she had them.
 But discomfort brooded upon her face like a shadow. and unhappiness lurked at the bottom of her shallow green eyes.