Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1935-03-01

! NOW LlC WOuIu OO o01Os nav AAANSAAA
passion for truth and honesty that had
driven her to confess to him publicly,
was nothing but backwoods gaucherie
to him. That was what hurt the
worst. He could have been so won
derful- his very last words were
a defense of cheapness if it was well
gilded.
There was where the real heart
break lay.
! She remembered saying to him the
very first evening that they were to-
gether that he wasn't the sort of per-
son she thought he'd be at all, but
that she liked him just the same.
Well, he wasn't the sort of person
she thought he'd be. 1t wasn't the
real Ford Ransom she had given her
heart to. 1t was her ideal of Ford
Ransom. And all this past month, her
dazzled eyes had been seeing her ideal
of him, until tonight, when the real
Ford Ransom had stepped out in
front of the ideal and insisted upon
showing her what he really was.
If she could go on seeing the real
Ford Ransom and not the imaginary
creature of perfection that she herself
had created, maybe she could forget
him. She had to forget him. Had to.
None of them could stand truth and
honesty. The significance of the ex-
change of words between Don and
Delicia as he left them showed her
that. She had broken up Delicia's
romance, too, and there was nothing
! she could do about that, either. She
and Ford between them had man.
aged to show Don how he had been
tricked, and Delicia had said, "You
can't tell a man you've just pulled q
fast one on him and expect him to
like it,
Why did people resort to trickery,
anyway? Or was honesty just a
dumb and countrified old-fahioned vir-
tue. Or was it just that there was
such a vast difference between the
world of the resorters and the world
of the natives that neither could ever
understand the other?
She couldn't understand why love
didn't beget love. She couldn't un-
derstand why men in Delicia's world
had to be tricked into marriage. Ma
tive boys didn't have to be. She
couldn't understand any of it except
that her honesty had made her ridicu-
lous in their eyes.
It is one thing to lose man you
love. 1t is much more painful thing
to know that he has gone away, con-
graduating himself on his escape. The
recurring memory of that hurt like
salt in a wound.
She didn't leave the house, but the
village gossip came to her. Don and
Ford had driven away together in the
middle Of the night. Two days later
Delicia's cottage was filled to over
flowing with a big house party that
looked as if it would go on all sum-
mer. Delicia wasn't suffering, any,
way. Or maybe that was merely her
way of hiding her suffering.
Lila couldn't hide hers. She lost
color and weight and animation until
her parents were frightened for her
but when they questioned her, all she
could say was, 81 was gawky and
dumb and Delicia doesn't like me any
MORE"
!. Days of such amending suffering
that it dulled her bright eyes and made
sluggish her limbs. Days when she
lay out in the swing in the sunshine,
listless, bored, tired, hopeless, wonder
ing how the flowers could go on
blooming and the little green cherries
swelling to their forthcoming black
glory in such hopeless world. And
then one day the telephone rang.
Darling Come right over! Don
and Ford just rolled in"
When she could force an answer
through her tight throat, what she
said was, "No, thank you."
"But Lila, you funny little thing!
It's all right. They have talked each
other out of their mad. The old tech
nique kicked through again, and I'm
/ so tickled. Ladies staged fight to see
how much gents cared. Well they
care. Come on over and join in the
| welcome for the prodigals."
Delicia waited for an answer that
didn't come.
/ ella Hendryx! Was that sigh?"
) eyes," said Lila, hanging up.
Delicia called her right back.
t "Listen! You've got Ford all sew
t ed up in a bag right this minute