The Tight White Collar Read Free Page B

would begin.
    â€œAfter all, the Catholics over there have their own school, so it hardly seems worthwhile to go to the expense of building a new public high school.”
    â€œMost of the kids at the Mills don’t really want to go to high school anyway.”
    â€œAnd most of them who do go never finish. I mean, they quit as soon as they’re sixteen years old and go right into the factories. I mean, the kind of education we give our children here would be sort of wasted there.”
    Besides being the newest, finest school building in the state, the Cooper Station high school had been provided with an auditorium and several smaller meeting rooms which provided facilities for all important town activities since the town hall was old, drafty and inadequately heated.
    As Nathaniel Cooper walked toward the lighted school building where the Cooper Station Town Board of Guardians was having its regular monthly meeting, he thought of the rather uncomfortable dinner he had just finished. It was always awkward to have dinner with a relative one hadn’t seen for ten years, he supposed. And Anthony certainly hadn’t been the best company.
    He drinks too much, thought Nathaniel, remembering the way Anthony had gulped four Martinis before dinner.
    â€œJust put in the gin, Nate,” Anthony had said. “And then whisper vermouth. That’s all. Whoops! Here, let me do it. You said vermouth too loud.”
    Margery had been nervous.
    â€œI watched for you, Anthony,” she had said. “When you wrote that you were coming and didn’t say anything about having anyone meet the train, I figured that you’d be driving. Is everything all right over at your house?”
    â€œWonderful,” Anthony had said. “The place is so spotless that it looks as if Mother’s ghost had been busy cleaning for a month. And Cooper Station hasn’t changed a bit. Nobody can fart but that it doesn’t make the front page of the
Clarion
. I hadn’t been in the house three minutes when you called up and I’ll bet everyone in town knows I’m here.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know what we’ll do from now on,” Margery had said worriedly. “I’ve had Marie over there, but she cleans for Jess regularly and I just borrowed her from him.”
    â€œDon’t worry about it, Margery. I’ll be fine. I don’t want anyone underfoot all the time anyway.”
    â€œAnthony?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œHow are you feeling?”
    â€œGood Lord, Margery, stop fussing. I’m fine. I just came home to rest and get some work done.”
    â€œNate wrote to your agent, Anthony.”
    â€œMargery,” Anthony had said savagely, “nervous breakdowns are very fashionable among writers. Didn’t you know?”
    The last of the Coopers, thought Nathaniel sourly. Oh, well, it’s probably a good thing. Maybe the line’s been around too long as it is.

    Besides Nathaniel, the Cooper Station Town Board of Guardians was made up of James Sheppard, a relative newcomer to the town who had been elected by what almost everyone regarded as a fluke, and Doris Delaney Palmer, the wife of Adam Palmer who was the president of the Palmer Soap Company of Boston. The Guardians, as they were called, acted in a supervisory capacity over all social and educational matters that concerned the town. The board acted as trustees for the town hospital, a fact which had driven Jess Cameron to outrage more than once, for except for Nathaniel who believed in leaving the job of hospital administration to those who knew what they were doing, the board, more often than not, fancied itself wise beyond wisdom and insisted on arguing about the price of x-ray machines when, as Jess put it, they should have busied themselves with rolling bandages. The Cooper Station library was also a victim of the Town Board of Guardians with the result that the small library contained a surfeit of books