New Britain herald., 1928-01-26

It WAS rom
 As she said good night to Sue at the curbstone a motorcycle drew up beside the car and the boy ran up the step with letter in his hand.
 Special delivery" she heard him say to Mrs. Lexington. who opened the door to him.
 She was turning the envelope over and over in her hands by the time Lily reached the front hall.
 Its for you. dear" she said, in such pleased tone that Lily knew it was from Staley Drummond be- fore she touched it.
 She tore it open. And she read it standing there in the hall with her mother reading it, too. from over her shoulder.
 Lily did not care whether she saw it or not. Sometimes it seemed to her that her friendship-or love af- fair or whatever her alliance with Staley was-was much more inter- esting to her mother than it was to herself. Her mother seemed to be 50 wildly eager for her to marry Staley, and always had been.
 Poor boy" she said now, as she began to read the letter. What did you do-surprise him when he was holding hands with his stenogra- pher, or something like that?"
 Lily nodded, her eyes on the two paragraphs that Staley had writ ten: Darling, if you'd be little more kind to me I wouldn't do that sort of thing. However, it was noth- ing that needs to bother you for a minute. let Miss James so with a months pay in advance to prove to you that mean this.
 "Please let me see you tonight. I want to tell you about a certain piston ring company that I bought today for next to nothing. You will be intereste and. I think, pleased. perhaps. Best love from
 "S. D.
 The telephone rang while Lily finished the letter. =. The sentence about the piston ring company that Staley had bought seemed to leap up at her from the page.
 So he had bought Pat and Roy Jefferson out But how could they have become so discouraged in a few weeks that they would sell out to him? Perhaps they got lot of money from him
 She found herself actually hoping so, for Pats sake.
 If that's Staley," she called to Mrs. Lexington without raising her eyes from the letter. tell him can't answer the phone, but that I'm expecting him to come over here tonight"
 While she was having dinner with her mother and father at seven, Ito, Staley's trusty Jap servant, arrived bringing a big box of flowers from his hot ot-house-blue and pink hya- cinths, tulips, jonquils, daffodils, all the flowers of the spring that was just ahead. Stanley could even buy the springtime before it came to other people.
 By the time he arrived the living room was bright and perfumed, and Lily. in a pale pink dress that she had bought at Angouleme's, where he had told her to charge anything she needed, was sitting on the davenport reading book he had sent her, and smoking one of the monogrammed. gold-tipped cigar cts.
 Mrs. Lexington might be doing the dishes in the kitchen alone, un- aided. Tomorrow morning Lily, in a folded house dress, might be dust ing this very room in her slippy- come-sloppy way. But tonight she was the old Lily of furnished hair, delicate clothes, polished nails, and luxurious ease.
 When the bell rang she went blowing blue cigaret smoke through her nostrils and never saying a word of greeting to Staley. She had made up her mind that she was going to put him in his place that night.
 But the minute she saw Staley she was sorry for him. He looked so down-at-the-m that he was pathetic, and his eyes pleaded with her like the eyes of a nice dumb animal, or a small boy who has been bad and knows it.
 T suppose you suspect me of all kinds of wickedness now. don't you?" he asked her when they were sitting before the fire on the old, lowered damask sofa that was not so gay and bright colored as it had been in the days when Mrs. Lexing- ton made the servants fly around the house with scrub pails and whisk brooms. Just because my secretary was sitting on my desk--'
 And rumpling up your hair and holding your hands," said Lily. and. suiting the action Of the word, she began to rumple up his hair with her soft little fingers.
 She saw his jaw tighten as she did it, and a hard glint come into his eyes. Suddenly his arms went round her and he held her so close