Miss Withers Regrets Read Free

suddenly made mistress of a big house and too many servants.
    “You’d better stop,” he told her.
    “Why should I stop, for heaven’s sake? I didn’t actually hit him, did I? And if you think I’m going to pick up every hitchhiker on the road …” Adele’s wide, thin-lipped mouth tightened under its generous layer of geranium lipstick, and she tossed her fluffy brown hair like an annoyed horse. “Probably just another discharged veteran thinking he’s entitled to free transportation.”
    They swung around another corner and came out on the crest of the hill, leaving the elm trees and their shade behind. Spread out before them was a vast panorama of water and sky, with white fleecy clouds scudding along and a great thunderhead moving north towards Connecticut. Two sailboats, under light canvas, were beating their way around the point.
    “I only suggested stopping back there because I thought I recognized that fellow you almost hit,” Midge said slowly.
    His wife stared at him. “You mean somebody from the field?”
    “No, my love. I thought he looked a lot like old Pat Montague.”
    Adele’s mouth opened wide. “Pat? But he’s overseas in Germany or Austria or somewhere.”
    “It may come as a great surprise to you,” Midge told her, “but they are even letting lieutenants out of the Army now.”
    Adele thought about that, biting her lower lip with very white but somewhat prominent front teeth. “You’re probably just imagining things, darling. And if by some fantastic trick of fate it was really Pat, I’m certainly glad we didn’t stop. Do you think I’d want to appear at Helen Cairns’s housewarming with her old heart-throb in tow? That would be just a little too-too!”
    Midge pointed out reasonably that he hadn’t wanted to appear at all. “If we really have to get drunk, why can’t we do it quietly at home?”
    “Don’t be stuffy, darling,” Adele snapped. “Nowadays you can still dislike a man and drink his liquor. Otherwise our social life would be pretty limited, wouldn’t it? You’re certainly not jealous of Huntley, after all these years! Besides, he has a lot of connections, and he could help in getting you a different job.”
    “There’s too much night work, working in the black market!”
    “Oh, stop repeating gossip! Just because a man manages to get materials to build a new house and happens to get a new car before the rest of us …” Adele smiled. “Besides, Huntley is in some sort of public-relations work. Anyway, I was at Miss Prescott’s with Helen, and she’s a dear girl if you like that sleepy, almost bovine type. I couldn’t resist a chance to see her new house, could I? Helen always had no taste at all in decoration. I remember her room at school was just a hodgepodge of family pictures and sentimental souvenirs. I can’t wait to see the inside of the place.”
    The outside of the place, salmon-pink and imposing, suddenly presented itself around a turn in the drive, and Adele hit the brakes sharply before turning in through the gateway. “Now, darling,” she begged, “for the love of heaven, don’t go shooting off your mouth as soon as we get inside. I mean about your wild idea that you saw Pat Montague. It probably wasn’t him at all but just somebody who looked like him.”
    Midge promised. He was forcibly reminded of that promise a few minutes later, when as he was still nursing his first martini he heard his wife’s clear, brittle voice from the other end of the long, bare, functional-moderne drawing room. She was trilling at their hostess: “Helen, my dear! Just guess if you can who Midge thought he saw today right here in Shoreham! Give up? It was Pat, Helen, Pat Montague!”
    Helen took it without even batting her wide, sleepy aquamarine eyes. Her beautiful, almost too-tranquil face blossomed into a smile, the little-girl smile that always started with a twist of her mouth. “Really? Dear old Pat. How was he looking? Was he still in uniform