New Britain herald., 1927-11-22

tired of looking at him" She shut her fringed eyelids to show how tired she was.
 "1'll have my coffee now, please she said.
 Her mother studied her for a full minute before she got up from her chair beside the bed. Then she shook her handsome head.
 "Well, l give you up, Lily" she decided then. Here you are, engaged to marry a man who can give you everything worth while in life-and you're as indifferent about him as you can be. Any other girl in this town would give her eye-teeth to be wearing that ring on your finger this morning. Pm sure l don't understand you at all. I thought you'd like me to ask him here for dinner" Still shaking her head, she went out of the room and down the stairs for the coffee tray.
 Lily lay perfectly still, star ing up at the ceiling.
 She wasn't at all sure that she understood herself this morning. Last night she had been filled with triumph and happiness when she had walked into the house with Sta ley Drummond's kiss on her mouth and his diamond upon her finger. For months and months she had been trying to get him to the Sticking point" the point of proposing mar riage to her.
 He'll never do it." her best friend, Susan Cain, had told her in their heart to heart talks. "Staley's almost 4O- and a bachelor as old as that is as slippery as a cake of wet soap"
 But he had done it. Last night on the way home from Sue Gains house he had asked her to marry him, and before she had had time to say "Yes' he had taken her in his arms and slipped the ring over her finger.
 Looking back upon it now, it seemed to Lily that he had been too sure of her. Too sure that she wanted him and ali the things that he could give her.
 "But am I sure of myself ?" she thought, her eyes on the gray, slanting rain outside the windows. "1'm going to marry him right enough, but do I really love him the way l should ?"
 She wondered.
 She liked him, of course. No one could help liking Staley Drummond, with his quick, friendly smile, his nice eyes and pleasant face, his generos- ity and his good nature. He was just as attractive as man could be, aside from the glam- our that his money gave him. And yet
 What is it I want ?" Lily asked herself. "There's noth- ing that he cant give me-
 Without realizing it, that was the way she always summed up people-from the viewpoint of what they had to offer her. What could this one give her? What could that one give her? And she liked or disliked them accordingly.
 For instance: she liked Sue Cain better than any of the rest of her girl friends because Sue had the largest house and a car of her own. Because she gave more parties than anyone else, and because she knew more men. A girl couldn't have a more useful friend than Sue Cain.
 Then Lily loved her father and mother because they man. aged, somehow or other, to give her all the things that she wanted. She knew that they denied themselves in order to buy her beautiful clothes and matinee tickets and to keep her little imported handbag filled with money for luncheons downtown and for bridge debts and fresh white gardenias to wear on her shoulder, She loved them because they were her father and mother, too, of course. But then, that was only natural.
 The door opened and Mrs. Lexington came in with the tray of coffee and orange juice. She set it on the bedside table beside the gilt telephone and the gilt clock and the hand mir