Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1939-07-14
CHAPTER THREE


Things, it seemed, always happened
to Linda with a bang. The big
things in her life, the important crises
never arrived quietly. Every really
important thing that had happened
to her-love, tragedy, even mother
hood-had been strangely mixed up
with an elemental drama she didn't
pretend to understand.
Well, Bill Blaine's entrance into
that odd jig-saw which was her life
seemed to fit the pattern. : If she had
met him under the palms at beach
cabana or prosaically on street cor
ner where people take street cars and
buy newspapers, it wouldn't have fit
somehow.
It seemed to make sense that Bill
Blaine should come into her life twen-
ty-five stories above the ground, with
their introductions the screams of a
manned man and the grinding whine
of ponderous machinery.
The hand which Linda watched,
without seeing, slipped to cup her
chin, forgotten. :.
Love! when you came in sight,
I got that o-o-old feelin'." How many
times had she and Janice and 10 rails
ed blended voices with those words,
mimicking favorite dance band trio I?
"Good girl, Linda!" She hadn't
dreamt that. Someone had said it,
and the voice was DR.. Thorpe's. Lin
da snapped out of it. "I'm proud of
you; wish I had been here for it," DIR.
Thorpe said hanging up topcoat and
hat. "Blaine just told me about it,
81 didn't know you knew >. do you
know him? ?" Linda asked.
DR.. Thorpe chuckled.
81 should. I practically support
him each month"
Linda let that pass, without trying
to decode it. DIR. Blaine didn't look
as though he needed supporting-any
month.
"Any calls? No? Well, TIL be in
side going over that Delston case"
Linda was alone again. Not quite
alone-for there was Mike. Her
thoughts could materialize him from
the happy and also tragic past =.
When Linda looked at Mike Nor
ton for the first time, it wasn't that
old feeling. It was new, newer than
tomorrow or a succession of tomor-
rows. Tomorrows that led Linda lit
tile dreamed where.
You couldn't look at Mike Morton
in retrospect. Mike was gone, but
when you thought of him, he wasn't
gone exactly. Mike wasn't of the pale
stuff of which memories are made.
He was too solid to become shade
too vibrant and gay and alive. Too
eagerly living today and tomorrow all
at once, until one day the last tomor-
row fell off the brink of space and
there weren't any more.
"Be true to me, Bug" Mike had
told her once, during that short
idyllic year, they had together. eff
you even look at anyone else," she
remembered that upward quirk of one
eyebrow and the impish CLINT in his
eyes, "I'll climb right up with wing
ablaze to ha'nt you when I'm gone!"
"MIKEw Linda had demonstrated.
"Don't even joke that way -. ;"
Mike had called her "Lindy-bug,"
mostly. AS name it wasn't very
sensible-but neither was Mike. It
was funny about the way he joked of
burning wings :. well, funny
wasn't the word.
For romance rode into the lives of
Linda Walsh and Mike Morton on
wings-and left it the same way. Not
the traditional cute little sprouts that
are the epaulets of decorative Cupids,
but real wings; wide, strong and sill
very shining.
great glistening wings of an air lines
transport plane that the face of Mike
Morton first turned up and saw Lin
da, standing framed there in the door
of the plane. Mikes face was the
kind to make girls look twice and ther
steal third look.
The roar of the twin motors drown
ed out his first exclamation upon see.
ing Linda, so he swung polo coat anG
brief case into one hand, ducked MIN