The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-09-18

new one?"
 Mot new" Ruth answered, tex cept to you. It's even got little darned places in it. It's knitted"
 T know" he said, starting the car. My mother does 'em. She knits 'em for herself and my mar ried sister in washington, Flor ence.."
 "Ah, yes," said Ruth. She's older than. you She made the guess recklessly, since she knew she ought to recall his family.
 "Yes." John replied. Picture me with a 10-year- r-old nephew and twin nieces, aged 5!"
 Ruth pictured him and found it a pleasure. If he had said, Pic ture me with two pet dinosaurs and an uncle who looks like Popeye," she would have found him charm ing in that group, too. He was that perfect to her. That superior to ali other men. But she must hide this from him.
 John McNeill was constantly be- ing gretted by people on the street and he lifted his hand in impar- tial salute to leading citizens, col- ored porters, traffic cops and pretty ladies ''Hi, Peter!" This to a lanky young chap descending the courthouse steps. Flows the boy?" Ruth was relieved that they did not pause to see how the boy was, for she suspected, and rightly, that here was someone Elaine Chalmers was supposed to remember. Peter Ashton," explained John, avoiding breadth. "He and his sister used to play in your back yard when you visited here. They sold their old home and moved out on the Heights couple of years ago. Alice goes to Mount Holyoke. Pete's about to be a senior at Yale"
 Think of thatr' remarked, Ruth politely, All grown up."
 Funny thing" John said. "Just last summer Pete and were laugh ing about the day you and Alice dressed up in some old finery you | found in a trunk and Pete and I yanked your trains off. We were fastening them to the f1agpole out the third story when Penny caught | us and sent us home"
 Served you right!" said Ruth sternly. She must make up some plausible excuse for not seeing Pete and Alice Ashton. "Espe- cially Alice!" she thought in panic, Shed know me for fraud in two seconds" She said to John, to divert him, "How far is it to this Cleveland town?"
 Don't be uppity," John answered 'just because you're from New York. Cleveland's got million people in it, most of lem good looking. It's got some good places to eat, too. We'll find one" The restaurant that he chose looked like a provincial French vil- lage. There was an ice-filled well in the middle of the rock floor from which pretty waitresses in peasant dresses fetched butter. There was three-piece orchestra a piano and two violins-which played re- markedly good music. Victor Her bert. Romberg. Jerome Kern. Friml, and even Strauss. The ta- ble linen was gay and coarse. The food delicious. John ordered a bot tie of the right wine, and Ruth, not being used to it, became very gay and nimble of tongue. y-..
 John said teasingly, "Td have thought Elaine Chalmers was a cocktail girl. Imagine you getting higher than kite on two little glasses of wine!"
 Maybe I'm just pretending it's wine," Ruth replied. Maybe it's being with you that makes me this way"
 He leaned across the table and looked at her very hard. If you say things like that" he said, you've got to mean them. I won't be strung"
 Ruth thought, "If I were Elaine could tell him that I do mean them. If were even myself, Ruth Woodson, I could tell him. But I'm just phantom. I'm the body and brain of, one girl, shamelessly wearing another girls name" She would not answer the look in his eyes.
 
 place to meet, he left her. Ruth saw his tall,, erect frame disappear in the crowd and she had swift, sharp taste of how it would be with her when she had seen him for the last time.
 She had the afternoon to kill, so she "didp the stores thoroughly. She chose the motion picture she would have like dto see and studied the advertisements in the outer lobby, so she could pretend to have seen 1t. That done, she went to purchase gift for Bertha Gibbs. f- She dropped diligently through the five and ten. When you have just two nickels and one copper cent in the whole world, you do not spend them without thought. You consider hundred things