Love & Mrs. Sargent Read Free Page B

ones—selling cosmetics door to door, Weiboldt’s and bedspreads in the holiday rush, peddling Christmas cards, soliciting subscriptions by telephone, a cheap dress shop on Wilson Avenue.
    But Mrs. Flood was an experienced autobiographer, “So I knocked about—the better shops, a little decorating . . . that sort of thing. But it was just too hectic for an old homebody like me. So for the past couple of years I’ve been—uh—assisting my cousin, Mrs. Richard Sargent, in her little project.”
    “You mean Sheila Sargent, the lonely hearts dame?”
    “ Well, yes, but of course she does so many other interesting things, too. Her books, her lectures, the television program she’s considering. It’s stimulating, Emily, and Cousin Sheila’s a darling.”
    Mrs. Sargent may have been a darling, but she was no kin of Mrs. Flood’s. Their late husbands had been distantly related and Mrs. Sargent, who was known for kindness, patience and tact, had met Mrs. Flood at one of the enormous cocktail parties at a propitious time in both their lives. It was a time when Mrs. Sargent was frankly weary of losing giddy young secretaries to the altar and when Mrs. Flood, whose feet had all but given out in the marts of commerce, was puzzling her way through the last lap of a Speedwriting course. One look at Mrs. Flood and Mrs. Sargent sensed that suitors would give her little trouble. One look at Mrs. Sargent—at Mrs. Sargent’s house and the quarters that went with the secretarial post, at the cars and the furs and the furniture and the aura of well-being—and Mrs. Flood knew that she would be safe and protected for as long as she could still totter. So far the arrangement had worked out satisfactorily for both.
    “And so here I am, Emily,” Mrs. Flood had said, with just a tiny hint of patronage.
    “Jesus!” Mrs. Porter had said, “quarter of three and the old bitch will be bawling for her back rub. Let’s get the check.”
    “No, Emily,” Mrs. Flood had murmured, laying a tender hand on the slimy nylon of her friend’s sleeve. “This is to be my party. I in- sist .”
     
     
    Mrs. Flood stopped the Anglia at the intersection, squinted to left and right and then ventured southward. She deplored what had happened to the old Lake Forest, for Mrs. Flood hailed froma day when the name on every gate summoned forth impressive, associations with bathtubs and tractors, pure lard and chewing gum, chain stores and ham. The old aristocracy was on the wane and in the parks of their great estates had sprung up new, modern houses crowded in as many as one to an acre. “Tacky,” Mrs. Flood snorted, heedless that each of the buildings she deplored cost just ten years of her full salary.
    Nor was Mrs. Flood’s salary anything to sneeze at. She was paid about ten dollars more than a competent young woman who could take shorthand and type with eight fingers and one thumb would be getting in a real office downtown. In addition Mrs. Flood had her own room and bath, her meals at the family table, plenty of free time and first grab at Mrs. Sargent’s hand-me-downs. Her expenses were nil. But Mrs. Flood was cautious with every dollar, content to do without in order to watch the little nest egg in the Continental Illinois Bank grow and grow and grow. Every week fifty good dollars were banked against the day when Mrs. Flood would be too old to work. And the day was not far off. Mrs. Flood claimed fifty-seven. Actually she was sixty-two. With any luck she could last here until seventy. Plus; the little retirement gift Mrs. Sargent would undoubtedly give her that would be . . . hmmmm. Mrs. Flood had no head for figures, but it would be quite a lot. Enough so that she’d never again be hungry or poor or frightened.
    Mrs. Flood thought of Emily Porter again and shuddered. . . Poor, dear Emily. Such a plucky little thing! So brave and gay in the face of. . . . She wondered if she just shouldn’t have used one of the crisp five-dollar bills in her