Kerry Read Free Page B

breakfast, but found after copying a few pages that she had left a newly purchased package of paper out in the sitting room, and came out to get it.
    Her mother stood before the small mirror that hung between the two front windows, preening herself, patting her hair into shape, tilting her expensive new hat at a becoming angle, and something glittered on her white hand as she moved it up to arrange her hair.
    Kerry stopped where she stood and an exclamation broke from her.
    Mrs. Kavanaugh whirled around on her daughter, and smiled. A little bit confused she was perhaps at being discovered primping yet quite confident and self-contained.
    “It certainly is becoming, isn’t it?” she said and turned back again to the glass.
    A premonition seized upon Kerry. Something—something—! What was her mother going to do? And then she caught a glimpse of the flashing stone on her hand again.
    “Mother!” she said helplessly, and for a second felt a dizziness sweep over her. “Why, where are you going?” she managed to ask, trying to make her voice seem natural.
    In a studiedly natural tone the mother answered.
    “Why, I’m going out to lunch, dear,” she said sweetly. “You won’t mind, will you?” As if that were an almost daily occurrence.
    “Out to lunch?” Kerry could not quite tell why she felt such an inward sinking of heart, such menace in the moment.
    “Yes, dear,” said Kerry’s mother, whirling unexpectedly around and smiling radiantly. “Mr. Morgan telephoned me that he wanted me to lunch with him. Would you have liked to go? He meant to ask you, I’m sure, but I told him you were very busy and would not want to be disturbed.”
    “Mr. Morgan!” repeated Kerry in a shocked voice. “You don’t mean you would go out to lunch with that—that”—she wanted to use the word her father had used about Sam Morgan but somehow she could not bring herself to speak it—“with that man my father so despised!” she finished bitterly.
    “Now, now, Kerry,” reproved her mother playfully. “You must not be prejudiced by your father. He never really knew Sam Morgan as I did. He was just a little bit jealous, you know. Of course I am the last one to blame him for that. But you know yourself your father would be the first one to want me to have a little pleasure and relaxation after the terrible days through which we have lived—”
    Kerry put out her hand almost blindly and wafted away her mother’s words; impatiently, as one will clear a cobweb from one’s path.
    “But Mother, you—you—
wouldn’t
go anywhere with that—that”—she choked. She was almost crying, and finished with a childish sob—“that great fat
slob!”
    “Kerry!” Her mother whirled around on her angrily. “Don’t let me hear you speak of my friend in that way again. You must remember you are only a child. I am your mother. Your father always required respect from you.”
    “Oh, Mother,” cried out Kerry helplessly, “don’t talk that way. I am eighteen. I am not a child anymore. You know that man is not fit—” And then suddenly she noticed the diamond again, and her eyes were riveted to it in a new fear.
    “Mother, you haven’t been buying diamonds! Mother, are you
crazy?
Don’t you know you’ve already spent more money than we have?”
    The mother glanced down with a sudden flush, and laughed a sweet childlike trill.
    “No, you’re wrong, for once, Kerry. I didn’t buy that diamond. Sam gave it to me. Isn’t it a beauty? Even an amateur must see that.”
    “Sam!”
The word escaped Kerry’s horrified lips like the hiss of a serpent as she stood like a fiery, flaming, little Nemesis before her mother. But Mrs. Kavanaugh paid no heed to her now. In a high, sweet key she went on.
    “Yes,
Sam
, dear! I may as well tell you the whole story now, though I had meant to wait and prepare you a little first, but you might as well know everything. Mr. Morgan has asked me to marry him, and I have accepted. He has been