The Wilmington morning star., 1947-08-29

had touched her, and carelessly,
II T. ulslvely She had offered to
share. And because Norah had re-
Jected her offer so CURLY she,
Gail, wOs angry.
She put herself to bed at last
and managed to remember how,
In the movies, she had seen peo-
pie put out lamps like this one.
After a brief struggle, she got it
out. For a moment there was an
unpleasant odor Of kerosene in the
room as the wick cooled off; but
she opened the windows wide and
climbed into the enormous bed
and felt the feather mattress en-
fold her. 1t was like lying on a
soft, downy cloud. She seemed to
sink down and down into it. At
first she wasn't quite sure she
liked it, but after a moment or
two of settling herself and feeling
its downiness yield to her move
ments, she found she did.
Her mind was a confusion of
snarled impressions. The shock of
discovering that her fathers
house was not the traditional "big
house" of some ante-bellum plan
tation; her father, himself, far
from being the lordly master of
many servants and many acres
and many dollars, worked with
his hands and his body like a
common laborer on the scant few
acres left to him, and lived in
this bare, comfortless old house.
Kate, with her quiet, hard-won
serenity, her g%entleness, her
friendly warmth; Norah, pretty
and young and craving the things
all pretty young girls want, yet
Withdrawing from the too careless
offer of more pretty clothes than
She had probably ever seen be-
fore in her life. And in spite of
herself, Gail saw again Gregg
Thompson's contemptuous eyes,
heard his scathing voice saying,
Fortunately there was enough
lef.. over after the mortgage to
provide a few orchids fer your
mother"
Looking back, she could remem-
Der now; there had been a day
when her mother had received an
unexpected check. To LISA it had
seemed small-a few hundred dol
lars, Gail hazily remembered.
LISA had laughed and said care
lessly, ooh, well, we al pay up
a few bills, anyway-on the sop
system. A little here and a little
there, to keep the creditors from
bounding us quite so hard. Only
I do think that Charles might have
been a little more generous. Why
couldn't he have sent enough to
really do some good? A lew thou
sand, instead of a few hundred,
if his conscience was bothering
him? AS Of course it perfectly nat
urally could bel"
A few hundred!
: Enough to have installed cleo
tricity or a water system here!
Enough to have made all the diff
ference in the world to the COM
fort and well being of these four
people whose home this ancient
barn was!
Calls thoughts rushed. hastily to
her mothers defense. LISA
hadn't dreamed, of course, that
Charles was having financial diff
ficulties. But even Calls thoughts,
SO quick FOR her mothers defense,
could not make herself believe
that, even had LISA known, she
would have returned the check or
any part of it. Once money went
into Lissa's lovely hands, it never
got out again, save to pay some
of the more pressing bills for her.
self and Gail. But it wasn't Lissa's
fault that she was selfish and self
conferred, Gail protested holly.
After all, LISA had never been
taught the value of money; no
one had ever told her that Charles
was desperately poor, that the
trust fund he had established for
her and COR Gail would have
seemed great wealth to him! But
no matter if LISA had known,
Gail knew, and hated knowing it,
she would have behaved exactly
as she had done. The money was
hers, and no power On earth could
have persuaded her to give it up.
Gail had heard her too often rail-
ing at the "miserliness" of
Charles in establishing a fund
whose principal she could not
touch, since it was in trust for