The Waterbury Democrat., 1932-01-07

avoided saying, Quite all right, I assure you," by saying nothing.
 Well" he reached for her hands. "I'll be running along, then. Good night, dear"
 Good night?" she echoed, with out the dear" But why in the world are you going so early? Ce- ely will think it's queer if you don't come in and meet her friend"
 What did he mean those shrug- ging shoulders to imply? Patience (Cecily, in a teasing humor, had said that Phil was as patient as e thimble.) Indifference? She had asked him last week what he meant when he shrugged. and he had answered that 1t was merely a mannerism, he supposed, and that he was sorry 1t annoyed her limiting, however, that Ann was easily annoyed.
 He hung up his hat again, and took off his raincoat again, and kicked his overshoes again-Phil never hurried. I'm afraid" he said, as he slicked down his hair again, that I'm in no mood for a family party nor for Cecily'a friends"
 The music room was lighted only with the piano lamp, and off in a shadowy corner Grand mercifully was dozing. Rosalie, with her back to the light, tossed Philip and Ann a contralto parenthesis and went right on being the alluring blond bell of South Carolina.
 Anne glanced at Cecily and saw that Rosalie and her allure did not fmatter--that nothing much mat. tered. Cecily was glowing with a blurred radiance that Anne under. stood. It came along with love at first, and 1t came because al! outside things were blurred and softened and made beautiful-foI the time being.
 Cecily, now, could not see that Phil with his six feet and two inches lowered above the shortish MT McKeel. She could not see that Phil, with his smooth hair and his deep, dark -browed blue eyes, and his maturity and manliness. made Barry McKeel look boyish and fragile and inadequate. In time, oi course, things necessarily emerged from the haze and crystallixed into clearly outlined duties, and practi- calities, habits, and certainties Marriage, Anne believed, made this emergence easy; totaling. as i' went along, certainties, duties habits, troubles, into a sum fine and noble, instead of confusing them into problems petty ana quarrelsome.
 Why this should be true. Anne did not know. Like many other practical persons she held nara tC few large reasonless faiths, ana one of hers was that marriage m itself was the eternal panacea :. For moment, as she looked at e. ely, pity and fear thumped to- gether in Ann's mind. It was an intolerable fusion, and she re- jected 1t, and tried to listen to Ro' salie, who was telling the old May, day story, with Cecily substituted for the heroine in place of Anne
 "Our dear son John was working toward his doctors degree, ana nc had accepted an assistant profess sorship-ur'--so Of the sort. in Harvard that year. Cecil, was not quite five years old, bu, she wrote a letter. l treasure Il vet. It said. Dear Rosalie: They made me Queen of the May at my school to-day. They did not make Father Queen of the May at his school. Your loving Anne Ce' cily, I mean. Fancy my saying Anne!"
 Everyone laughed but Phil wht could not be expected to laugn since he had heard the story many times before.
 Barry exclaimed pleasantly abou' little girls who went to school a four years old and wrote letters ana Rosalie began her interm!nablt round of anecdotes concerning tn' three prodigies, the sisters Fen' wick. and Phil sat, and was hanu' some, and looked bored, bored | bored.
 For Phil's sake, and for Cecily'i too. Anne snatched the opportunit. offered at the end of Rosaiie' story about six-year old Mary Frances and her first view of tn. Pacific ocean CT had understood, iisped Mary-Frances, as she turned away. "that it was much bigger than that") to tell about the run nv man who had gone with then for the Labor day party to Agat' Beach. :.
 "He was A 'steenth cousin O somebody's and we none or U, understood how he got 'nto oul group at all. But there ne was and he liked us less than we hke'