Ee —
Bellefonte, Pa., September 7, 1928.
St
LONELY, NEBER-MORE.
Written for the Watchman, in 1902, by
Will Truckenmiller.
De great red sun am settin’
De day am almos’ gone
I hears de hoot owl's callin’
De night am comin’ on
An’ in de house der’s silence
Der’s silence ebermore,
No friendly voice am callin’
No footsteps on de floor
Lonely, lonely, lonely, neber-more,
When I jine de loved ones waitin’
For me on Canaan’s shore.
Go, red sun in your glory
Go down de golden west
Some even’ with your settin’
I, too, shall go to rest.
I'll go across de rib'er
Or Jordan, deep and wide,
An’ jine de loved one's waitin’
Dere on de odder side.
Lonely, lonely, lonely neber-more
When I jine de loved ones waitin’
For me on Canaan’s shore.
PRE-WAR.
Freud is really quite passe; con-
tract bridge and mental agility tests
now provide the table-talk that psy-
cho-analysis and the stuff dreams are
made of once did. Yet humans do
coatinue to dream, as Bettina was to
dream of Peter Leicester after their
first encounter, although when she
sat on the edge of her bed at two
o'clock of a March morning she had
no such expectations.
The frock she still wore, revealing
her sweetly modeled young should-
ers and most of her straight line back
too, suggested what her evening’s ac-
tivities had been, as did the dancing
slipper that, with a frank yet charm-
ing yawn, she was removing. She
was not thinking of Peter; she was
thinking only that the second her
head touched the pillow she would
drop off into sound and dreamless
sleep.
Sleep she certainly did. It was al-
most eleven when her eyes blinked
open and she yawned again. She
felt luxuriously revitalized. So much
she realized before she remembered
her dreams. For them she might
have blushed. Instead she grimaced.
“Of all men, him!” she thought
with amused disdain.
And that is the twist that what
once might have proved a perfectly
good example of love at first sight
is apt to take—in 1927.
For nowadays love at first sight
has become almost as passe as Freud.
The hapless young male who chal-
Or “I bought it at Leicester's—
they’re having a sale there.”
In 1927 shoppers of another gen-
eration said: “You can leave your car
in the store garage and take the bus
to Leicester’s.,” Or “Have you seen
the new dancers at Leicester's? Well,
you must take afternoon tea with me
there.”
In brief, the first Leicester had
been a penny-scrimping merchant all
his days. The second, Peter’s father,
had gone to Harvard and rowed on
the crew. After graduation, though
he had “started at the bottom,” he
had played excellent tennis, essayed
golf and owned fast boats.
- The third Leicester—Peter—had
gone to St. Paul’s, then to Harvard,
where he had achieved an H in foot-
ball and at hockey. >
“] suppose,” his father had said
to him after his graduation, “that I
ought to set you rustling packing-
cases. But I've got a hunch, Pete,
that the less you see of this particu-
lar business during the next couple of
years the better you’ll be equipped to
step into my shoes some day. I hope
you're in no hurry.”
“None at all,” Pete had assured
him with a grin.
“My idea is to have you travel,”
his father had added. “See America
first— particularly our big depart-
ment stores. They'll all teach you
something. You can spend a year
doing just that. Then another year
or so should be spent seeing the
world—and the world markets. You
can only sell what you buy, you know,
and I'd like to have you get an idea
of where all this stuff comes from—
how it’s made and where. Then if
I decide to set you rustling cases you
will at least have vision to help you
on and up.’
And that had been Pete’s pleasant
program up to the moment when a
cablegram had summoned him back.
That, cabled and recabled, telegraph-
ed, had reached him in India where
a native runner had found him taking
tiffin—in long glasses—with the Brit-
ish officers with whom he had been
playing polo.
“Get in touch with London office,”
the message he so casually opened
had read. “Prepare for bad news.”
They had tried to soften the shock
—the men who, later, were to put
every obstacle in his path. They had
had no thought of the wild ride that
lay before him or the hours of mental
torment he was to endure before he
discovered how very bad the news
was.
Less than a month later he had
sat down with the minority stock-
holders in Leicester’s for the first
time. Today he had sat down with
them for the last.
“An awkward moment,” he had
commented. after signing certain pa-
pers which were ready for him. “I
realize I am supposed to say some-
lenge feminine interest at first glance
is very likely to be subjected to a'
second glance that suggests not the |
rose-tinted glance of romance but a
microscope. Those who say men are
slow to marry because girls demand
so much are quite right. Girls do.
Especially when they have what is .
known as the father complex. Bet-
tina had it. Badly. A young and,
at that moment, very much ruffled
psychologist had only recently assur-
ed her so. |
“Your love image,” he had inform- |
ed her, “is the product of your asso- |
ciation with your father. You adore |
him.”
“Gracious!” Bettina had comment-
ed. “Is that a crime?” i
“Your interest in all his affairs,” |
he had gone on, ignoring her frivol- |
ity, “your effort to strengthen pure- |
ly blood ties by becoming his private
secretary as well ag his daughter—"
“And I thought it was really so |
commendable of me to study stenog- |
raphy so I might do just that,” she
had mourned. And had asked with
misleading meekness, “Well, what
would you do if you were me?”
The remedy he had suggested had
left her unimpressed. She had told
him so.
“Lest I seem too personal,” she
added, “I'll confess that men don’t in-
terest me particularly. Young men
that is. They seem—well, all so wet |
behind the ears if you know what I!
mean.”
“I do,” he had admitted bitterly.
“Your love image, built around your
father, demands the outstanding busi-
ness ability he typifies.”
The young psychologist was quite |
right. As Peter was to dicover.
They—Peter and Bettina—had met
at the ball which formally opened
Boston’s newest hotel. Bettina, who |
in Boston was a stranger in a strange
land, had gone only because the own-
er was a friend of her father’s.
“I don’t know anybody and I’ll be
bored stiff,” she had prophesied.
Nevertheless, being Bettina and,
after all, only tewnty-three she had
thing, preferably gracious. But I
prefer merely to say—good-by.”
And, with cool insouciance, he had
risen and passed out of the board
room where a Leicester had always
had the last word.
Yet if, when he danced with Bet-
tina, he felt bitterness, there was
none in his eyes as they smiled down
at the loveliness she turned up to-
ward him. Why he had evaded her
question he could not have said. He
never dreamed, certainly, that she
was the daughter of the William
est who, representing a Western
syndicate which was really William
West, had finally achieved its pur-
pese and added Leicester's to its
holdings. :
Nor did she have any reason to con-
nect him with that shadowy Peter
Leicester to whom her father had
made casual and not particularly
complimentary reference.
“I suppose,” had been her comment
on Peter's evasion, “that stuff goes
well with butterflies. But I’m a busi-
ness woman—and business women
prefer facts to flattery, you know.”
“You don’t suggest a business wo- '
man,” he had assured her. And had
added with an engaging grin, “But
then—would you ever guess that I
was a retired business man?” i
Bettina had glanced up at him, |
“Never,” she assured him. And add-
2d deliberately, “You look much too ;
voung to have retired from anything
—save, perhaps, college.” |
“I'm old enough to have retired from |
business,” he had replied and for a
second his eyes had shadowed. Then,
“Although I'll admit that my exper-
ience was brief and that I only re- |
tired at four o’clock this afternoon.
You see, I sold my inheritance for
a mess of pottage and—” !
“At four—this afternoon?” she
had echoed. Her widened eyes had |
met his. “Is—is your name Peter |
Leicester by any chance?” |
had asked, “But how did you know—"
“Because,” she had answered—Bet-
worn the frock that revealed both
shoulders and back and did not at all
suggest the competent young secre- | West, daughter of William West.” | Bettina heard from Peter within the |
tury she had made of herself for her |
father’s benefit. Rather was it pre-
cisely the sort of frock that would
tina being a great believer in the
. truth—“my name is West—Bettina !
It had taken him a minute to get!
that. i
had said.
give any young man the impression| “And what are you going to do
that there was in it a girl he’d like
to meet.
Even before Peter arrived several, |
obeying that impluse one need not ba
a psychologist to understand, had
succeeded in securing dances
her. She was dancing when Peter
saw her first. And he, also obeying
impulse, had crossed the floor to de- |
mand that her partner surrender her
to him. Bettina had glanced up at him
when this was accomplished.
“And who are you?” she had de-
manded coolly.
“I have,” he had retorted as coolly,
“no claim to distinction save what
this moment gives me.”
This was not at all true. The
name he bore was well-known in Bos-
ton and throughout New England.
He was the third of the department
store dynasty that had been founded
by his grandfather, a hard-headed
old Yankee who, starting with a small
store which he even swept out him-
self, had lived to see his lengthened
shadow grow into that institution
krown as Leicester’s.
“You can probably match it at
Leicester's,” women had assured each
other as long ago as the eighties.
with |
-now that you've retired?” she had
| asked.
“Enjoy myself—have a lot of fun,
i hope,” Peter had assured her cool-
vy.
Which was where what might have
been the beginning of a perfectly
good love story took an unmistakable
flop. For to Bettina, business was
the modern field of cloth of gold from
which he had been ignominiously
routed.
“Retired business men usually go
in for travel—is that your plan?”
she had suggested, no more than
making conversation as her feet fol-
lowed the pattern his set to the mus-
ic.
“I had almost two years of travel,”
he had replied. “So—I think I'll stick
around Boston for a time.”
As he spoke his eyes had met hers.
He was still smiling, yet she glimpsed
in them something—weil, perhaps it
was that something which had been
responsible for the perfectly idiotic
dreams she had had of him. Dreams
in which, she remembered as she still
luxuriated in bed this March morning,
he had tried to kiss her. .
Then: “Oh, I see,” was all he jh
“And did,” she further remembered
with no diminution of serenity.
With which, reaching for the
phone, she ordered breakfast served
in her room.
Now eleven o’clock, ante meridian,
is not the hour that most private
secretaries breakfast. But Bettina
would have denied that she was spe-
cially privileged. She handled her
father’s more intimate correspondence
and this was dictated to her at all
hours.
“Anywhere from nine o’clock one
morning till two the next,” was the
way she put it.
They might be in Boston a week or
a month. She didn’t know. Her
mother was in Europe, domiciled in
a villa on the Riviera,
“I have one daughter,” her mother
sometimes told inquirers, “but she
spends her life trying to be a son to
her father. That ig why you never
see her.
the country with him, living
trunk.”
Bettina did. She adored it.
Today her father would be at Lei-
cester’s, laying the lines for reorgan-
iaztion. She would be lucky if she
saw him at dinner. In the meantime,
finished with breakfast, she began to
go through the mail that awaited him.
In spite of his humorous references
to her activities, he did admit that
she had a flair for determining what
he should see and what he needn’t.
So, winnowing wheat from chaff,
she came to a letter which caused her
eyes to widen.
“Good gracious!” she gasped, and
read it through a second time.
The meat of it was in the last para-
graph. “The enterprise,” this read,
“will be known as the Peter Leicest-
er Shops, Inc. If this suggests
grounds as legal action, I suggest that
you turn the agreement I signed over
in a
to your lawyer as I did to mine be-
fore I put my signature to it.”
|
And this was signed by Peter Lei-
cester!
“But he said he was going to enjoy
himself—have a lot of fun,” Bettina
remembered dazedly.
The letter went into the pile that
waited her father’s attention. He
was late and he came in frowning.
But being his daughter as well as his
private secretary she felt privileged
to kiss him none the less.
This was achieved by standing on
tiptoe, presenting a picture that made
it understandable how the young psy-
chologist could attribute a father
complev and a love image to Bettina.
For William West stood a full six
feet, and, at fifty, preserved much of
the trimness of youth.
“What's wrong ?” she demanded as
soon as she had kissed him.
“Somebody’s chosen this moment to
snipe at the organization,” he replied. :
“A dozen department heads handed in
their resignations today.”
“What on earth for?”
“Ask them,” he retorted with grim
whimsicality. “I questioned some of
them, but they preferred to be mys-
terious as the devil. Of course they
can be replaced—what I'd like to
know is what’s back of it all?”
“I'll bet I know,” announced Bet-
tina abruptly. She turned and pro-
duced Peter’s letter. “Read it—and
weep,” she suggested.
Instead, having read it, he smiled.
“So that’s what’s become of my dex
partment heads,” he commented:
“What do you suppose his motive is
—revenge 7”
“He didn’t sound revengeful last
night.”
“Last night?” he echoed, puzzled.
a “I danced with him,” explained Bet-
na.
Her father gave her a swift glance. |
“Are we to see more of him?” le
suggested ligthly.
Bettina dismissed that with a shrug
of a pretty shoulder. “What are you
going to do about his shops?” she
asked.
“Do?” he smiled again. “Nothing.
We'll let nature take its course.”
And that, Bettina realized, wag the
reaction she might have expected. He
was no more interested in Peter’s ac-
tivities than a Great Dane would have .
been in the yapping of a terrier pup
at his heels.
Later, after dinner, he dictateq a
brief note which no more than ex-
pressed cordial interest in Peter's
project.
“The truth is,” he explained, “that
he did put something over on us. No
one ever thought of his going into
business on his own. Any action I
might take woul¢ simply call atten-
tion to the fact that Leicester's is no
longer New England controlled, and
I prefer to avoid that. Besides, it
would give him too much free adver-
tising. Perhaps he hoped for that.”
He took up the next letter but be-
fore reading it added: “It takes time
he’s up against. It will be months
before we hear from him again—if
ever.”
In, he meant, a business way. But
next (forty-eight hours. He called
er up to suggest a show that she
Dien: care to see—with him, natur-
ally.
“Why—I don’t know,” she began,
taken by surprise. And, placing her
palm over the mouth-piece, she turn-
ed and relayed the astonishing invi-
tation to her father.
“Why not go?” he suggested hu-
morously. “You can question him
deftly—and report back on his activi-
ties—if any.”
She made a little face at him and—
accepted. And, for all her father
complexes and disbelief in dreams,
contrived to present a Bettina that
was young and very lovely to look
at when she greeted Peter in the lob-
by. The inimitable intimacy of the
taxi enclosed them.
“Tell me,” suggested Bettina, “what
the Peter Leicester Shops are to be
and why—and where.”
“They represent an idea of my
own,” he replied. “They are to be—"
“Oh, wait a minute,” interrupted
Bettina. “I should have warned you
that anything you say may be used
against you. I am—my father’s pri-
vate secretary, remember!”
Even the murk of the taxi failed
to hide the cool amusement in his
eyes. “Don’t you ever take time off
from business?”
She prefers to tear around
| Bettina flickered an eyelid at him.
“Seldom if ever,” she replied. “I
have no regular hours—the man
‘works me day and night.”
{ “I hope the position pays well,”
he commented. “It ought to.”
“I get no more than my board and
clothes,” she mourned. He was easy
to talk to and, she suspected, would
be as easy to play around with. “But
if you are determined to talk about
your affairs in spite of my warning,
don’t let me interrupt you, please.”
“Really interested ?” he asked.
“Terribly!” she assured him. “You
gave me the idea you were just go-
ing to enjoy life.”
“I expect to—immensely. I—”
The taxi stopped and they were en-
gulfed in the flow of theater-goers,
swept into an auditorium already
darkened for the first curtain. At the
end of the act he turned to her.
“I imagine you missed my an-
nouncement in tonight’s paper,” he
said abruptly. “The shops will be in
the Park Square section. They will
open April first, but if you’d care for
a preview I'd be charmed.”
“April first?” echoed Bettina. “So
soon?”
“I thought it would take longer.
Father said that—"
“But I have had all the time in the
world these last few months.”
“You mean—while you still owned
Leicester’s 7”
“While I still owned what wag re-
ferred to, erroneously, as control in
Leicester’s,” he corrected. “Are you
sugesting that I did something un-
ethical? Because if you are I must
protest that at Leicester's I was
plainly regarded as an interloper.
The idea geemed to be that if I had
to be seen around the place—and ev-
en that didn’t seem tactful of me—I
might at least refrain from making
myself heard.”
“But if you owned——"
“And I thought,” he commented,
“I was talking to a business woman.
Can't you understand how successful-
ly I could be flattered out?”
Bettina could. But before she
could reply the lights glimmered out
and the curtain rose again, imposing
silence on them.
The play was—just a play. A slice
of life presented for their interest,
yet less interesting, as often happens,
than the slice of life some of its spec-
tators find themelves acting out. Es-
pecially those who are engaged, un- |
consciously or otherwise, in the an-
cient tilt of sex. |
The moment the act ended his eyes
sought—and found—hers. “It wag in-
timated to me in many ways,” he told
her, “that I was very young and that
what litle knowledge I had was the-
oretical.”
“Well, it was, wasn’t it?”
“Absolutely. I had no false ideas
about that. But I did crave a chance
to learn—instead of going out in the
back yard and playing with my toys,
as it were.”
“I still think you might have man-
aged to have your own way,” she
commented.
“I think I might have,” he agreed
cooly, “if, just then, your father had
not come into the picture and offered
to buy control.” i
Bettina glanced at him. He did not
seem bitter. But wag he? Being Bet-
tina she promptly asked him.
“It was mighty good business ¢n
his part,” he replied. “He couldn’t
have chosen a better time. Leicest-
er’s is a mighty big proposition and
it does need a firm hand at the helm.
Particularly just now.”
“Why just now?” demanded Bet-
tina quickly.
“Everyone,” he went on as if he
had not heard her, “who knows any-
thing about retail merchandising
knows your father. To the mingrity
stockholders he seemed a commercial
Moses, ready to lead them to a prom-
ised land. I don’t blame them. I
imagine I would have felt the same
way—a darned sight rather have Wil-
liam West own the controlling inter-
est, than have that in Peter Leicest-
er's hands.”
“Are you really as modest as you
sound ?” ’
| “Probably not—who is?” he retort- |
ed, with a swift smile. “But che
facts are there. The handwriting was
on the wall and—"” He checked him-
self abruptly. “That curtain,” he re-
marked, “certainly seems to be cut-
ting the entr’actes short to night.”
The third act was the last. At its
end Peter, draping her cloak over her
shoulders, asked if she cared to go
somewhere and eat.
“Not tonight—some other time,
perhaps,” she replied unguardedly.
“I am so glad that there is to be
| some other time,” he replied.
| “Well?” her father demanded as,
later, she planted a kiss on the tip of
“By the chance of birth,” he had | and planning to start even a peanut his nose. “How came young Lochin-
confessed. And, surprised himself, i stand. I suspect he has no idea what var—in peace or in war—”
“Oh, he’s nice—an engaging child,”
retorted Bettina.
i “What’s he up to?” asked her fath-
er idly.
“I just don’t know exactly. He
talked mostly of Leicester’s—but he
did say something about an announce-
ment in the paper.”
i Letting her wrap slip swiftly from
her intriguing shoulders she found
the newspaper, turned the pages, then
paused, to read.
There’s A Little Shop
In the Rue De La Paix
i! The little shops of Europe! Who
has not heard of them? Some on the
beaten track. some off. But all quick-
ening the memory of the seasoned
traveler.
“There’s a litle shop in the rue de
la Paix.”—how many smart, always
exquisitely attired women who know
Europe intimately have shared that
i secret with some feminine intimate
or acquaintance about to make her
| first trip abroad! “The most ravish-
ishing things, my dear—everything
from the skin out. And the values!
| That trotteur of mine only cost. . 2
“What are you reading so absorb-
edly?” demanded Bettina’s father at
that point. Let’s see it.”
Bettina, without surrendering the
paper, perched on the arm of his
chair and let her eyes run ahead of
his.
| And so an address is scribbled
down, treasured. Paris may be only
|a shadowy dream city, the Louvre
still a storehouse of art. But the
the sixteenth,” he replied.
little shop in the rue de la Paix is, vo
soon, a definite, clearly imaged fem-
inine Eden.
All these famous little shops are
not devoted to women, of course.
There’s a little shop in Piccadily that
your masculine friend who knows
London can and will tell you about—
enthusiastically.
“He’s a long time coming to the
point,” commented William West—
yet read on.
And so, presently, came to the
point. Which was that the Peter Lei-
cester Shops, Inc., proposed to trans-
port the atmosphere, the charm, the
know-how and the values of a dozen
of the best-known little shops in
Europe to Boston, where, exact rep-
licas of their originals, they would
all be housed under one roof.
“What do you think of it?” de-
manded Bettina. :
“Too long—and amateurish too,” he
commented. “I imagine he wrote it
himself.”
“I don’t mean the ad—I mean the
idea,” she told him. “Do you think it’s
a good one—that it will be success-
ful?”
“Now you're asking two questions
at once,” he replied. “No idea is bet-
ter than the man—or men— behind
it. A man who starts off with a good
idea can smash up just as quickly—
sometimes even sooner than a man
who starts off with a bad one. It’s—
well, like using a baby-carriage as a
chassis for an eight-cylinder engine,
if you get what I mean.”
“You—think he has’t a chance?”
“Read Bradstreet’s monthly report
on failures.” he suggested dryly.
Somehow Bettina did not like the
sound of that. Why, she could not
have said. Perhaps it was because
Peter had looked so young and gal-
lant as he bade her good night. And
it must have been hard for him to
surrender control of the business that
had been his father’s—and his grand-
father’s.
“You havent said yet what you
think of the idea,” she reminded her
father.
“How can I—yet? I will say this,
though—the better an idea seems, the
more I prefer to study it. I doubt if
your young man has done that.”
“He isn’t my young man,” protest-
ed Bettina indignantly.
“Glad to hear it,” he replied. “Got
a kiss for your old man?”
Betina had. Then, “How long are
we to be in Boston?” she asked.
“Lord knows,” he replied. “The
truth is, kitten, that Leicester’s is not
a smooth-running organization at the
moment. It looks as if I'd have to
stick around a while.”
“He—Mr. Leicester, I mean—said
there was something wrong with the
business. That it needed a firm hand
at the helm.”
*“What did he say was wrong with
it?” asked her father quickly.
“He didn’t say—something inter-
rupted.” :
“He may be a young fool—but that
doesn’t sound as if he were a hopeless
one,” commented her father thought-
fully. “Clip his ads for me, and—you
might accept that invitation to view
his shops.”
“0. k.,” replied Bettina, but with
mental reservations. :
She’d clip the ads, certainly—but
she had no intention of .giving Peter
any false impressions by going
around to see his shops. i
At one o’clock on Wednesday, how- |
ever, her father departed for a flying
trip to New York. At four o'clock
on Wednesday—which was as perfect
a May day as ever slipped out of its
place into the March calendar—it oc-
cured to Bettina that she was bored
and that there was no reason why she
shouldn’t drop around and have a look
see at Peter’s shops.
He greeted her with just a hint f
disciplined eagerness in both eyes and
voice. “I hoped you’d come.” he said.
“Father suggested that I might,”
she replied coolly. I'm really a spy—do
I get shot?”
“I prefer,” he amended, “to treat
you as an ambassador from a great
and—I hope—friendly nation. This,
by the way, is the little shop.”
“From the rue de la Paix,” she
supplemented. “I guessed as much—
although you don’t suggest the at-|
mosphere your advertisements prom-
ise. |
He grinned. “I suspect not—I be- |
long in the pipe shop.” :
“Have you got a pipe shop too?” |
she asked, surprised.
“Absolutely! The twin of the one :
in London where they try a pipe on
to see if it fits your face—just as
if it were a hat—and then send you
down-stairs to have a physician test
your heart and prescribe the proper do
smoking mixture for you.”
“Not really!” protested Bettina.
“You’ll see it,” he promised. “And
the rest, too, I hope.”
The little shops were all in process
as yet, but Bettina could see that they
would have distinction, even fascina-
ation. She told him so, frankly. It
was five o’clock by then and the work-
men were leaving.
“I've a car outside—can I drop you
somewhere?” asked Peter.
Bettina said he might—at her ho-
tel. The car, a long underslung road-
ster, was at the curb; he opened the
door and after she had seated her-
self maneuvered himself behind the
wheel. Then, swiftly, his eyes sought
hers.
“Must you go back to the hotel 2”
he asked.
Bettina hesitated. “Why—I don’t
know,” she murmured. “Father has
gone to New York, leaving me g
amuse myself.”
pt me help—or try to,” he beg-'
ged.
“How ?” demanded Bettina practic-
ally. “It’s got to be something bet-
ter—more original—than dinner and
a show, I warn you.”
“Dinner and a show on a day like
this!” he protested. “Perish the
thought.”
The clutch slipped in and the car
gathered momentum, took its place
in the stream of traffic. |
“You haven't told me yet what the
program is,” Bettina reminded him.
He glanced at her. “This is only
“I'm sor-
ry for that.” |
“Why ?” she asked. !
“The moon will not be full until the
trol,”
‘struck me that Leicester’s had reach-
“started small.
eighteenth. But it will be almost full
tonight, anyway. And we'll see it
rise out of the ocean. And there will
be the sound of the surf and a bit of
river and a stretch of marsh that
suggests the Scottish moors. I hope,
by the way, you like lobster and
clams.”
“Adore them,” she assured him.
“But where is all this to happen?”
“I have a place on the South Shore
that I used to use as a hunting stand.
I haven't been there” —he checked
himself almost imperceptibly—“for-
some time. But the caretaker and
his wife are there and——"
“Lovely!” murmured Bettina. “You
sounded like Aladdin, but I was aw-
fully afraid it was going to be a road
house. And today suggests Pan rath-
er than jazz.
The sun sank, the sunset flamed
and after that the darkness, soft-
starred overhead, was pierced by the
searchlights that ran ahead of them
during the last, sea-savored stretch
of road that brought them to their
destination.
The caretaker, a tall, weather-
beaten Cape Codder who hadn’t shav-
ed for days, appeared to greet who-
ever it might be.
“Why, Pete!” he exclaimed, and as
Pete swung out to shake hands,
thumped him on the back and bellow-
ed “Ma!”
The door he had emerged from, a.
golden oblong of light, framed a ma-
tronly silhouette for a second. Then:
“Pete!” paeaned Ma, and they moved
swiftly toward each other until they
merged, with Pete in Ma’s embrace.
The house, save for the light from
the windows and the open door, was
but a shadow against the sky. But
Bettina could smell and hear the sea,
and both sound and scent followed
her indoors. An isolated, primitive
place, this camp of Peter's yet, there
were shaded lights in the living-room
and an unstudied charm that suggest-
ed neither Peter nor the caretakers,
somehow.
“My mother used to come a lot,”
explained Peter, as if sensing the
question in her eyes. “We were great.
pals. She was killed with my father
in an automobile accident while I was:
abroad, you know.”
Bettina hadn’t known that. And,
for a second, she felt an impulse to
place swift, comforting fingers on
his arm. But Ma bustled in.
“Jim’s going to lay a fire here,”
she said. “Would you like to go up-
stairs and take off your things,
Miss 2”
Up-stairs Ma, obviously excited by
this visit, became confidential. “We'd
begun to think we’d never see Pete
again,” she said. “Of course we got:
our check regular, but it’s been a sore
trial not having him drop down the
way he used to before he went to
foreign parts and his ma and pa were
killed. He’s changed 2 lot—older,
don’t you think?”
“I haven't known him very long,”
confessed Bettina.
“Well, I guess you don’t have to
know him very long to see that he's
salt of the earth,” said Ma. stanchly.
“Goodness, how I run on with supper
to get! Fix yourself up and come
down when you’re ready.”
Logs were blazing in the open fire-
place when Bettina rejoined Peter.
She slipped into a chair and smiled
up at him.
“Like it?” he asked.
“Love it,” she assured him.
“I'm glad,” said he.
They had dinner on a table set for
two, in front of the open fire, with
Ma bustling in and out and Jim hang-
ing around smoking a corn-cob.
Presently Bettina, filled to satia-
tion, leaned back and let her eyes
meet Peter’s.
an bet I'm a sight,” she suggest-
ed.
One is apt to be after clams and
lobster. But what she saw in his
eyes disputed her.
They lingered a little before the
crackling fire and then went out to
the beach. The moon, as if it had
courteously awaited their arrival,
soared up out of the sea.
“I should think you’d want to come
“often,” said Bettina, drinking it all
in. “If IT owned all this——"
“I don’t own all this,” he correct-
ed. “Only the cottage—and I don’t
really own that now. I've made it
over to Jim and Ma—they don’t know
it yet.”
“You have? Why?”
“I'd want them to have it—if any-
thing happened,” he said.
“You sound as if you were making
your will. Why should anything hap-
pen?” ,
“In business many things can—and
“You don’t mean—that you’re
afraid of failure!”
“Afraid? Not exactly. But it’s al-
ways
neck.”
“But even if the shops should fail,
you won’t go broke, surely. I know
what Father paid you for your stock,
remember.”
“It’s all mortgaged—I bought the
building the shops are in, too.”
“But—you didn’t need that, did
you?”
“I thought I might—sometime,” he
confessed. “But this is a beautiful
night and that’s a long story.”
“I'd like to hear it,” she announced
impulsively. “If you feel you can tell
me
possible. And I'm in to my
“I seem to want to—awfully,” he
replied.
Which, as Bettina very well knew,
was a symptom. But she made no
move to deal with it, administer the
proper prophylactic.
“The real reason I sold my con-
he began, “was because it
ed a danger point.” He paused for
a second, then: “Leicester's em-
ploys almost three thousand people
who, individually as well as in ag-
gregate, stand for the firm. Put it
this way: a single salesperson who
ignores or high-hets a
creates animus
customer
toward the name
; Leicester. And it seemed to me that
Leicester’s needed a thorough over-
hauling.”
“That,” ran Bettina’s thought,
“must be what Father meant.”
“My grandfather,” he went on,
He had personal re-
(Continued on page 7, Col 1.)