Henderson Daily Dispatch

Mark's Wife

By

WRITTEN FOR AND RELEASED BY CENTRAL PRESS ASSOCIATION

MARIE BLIZZARD

Barbara rounded the corner and looked at the parking space where her old station wagon should have been, remembering only at that moment that she had walked down to the village in the morning. It was part of her small economies to use the car only when she had business use for it.

She debated returning to the shop for a moment and then thought of her small son. Ruth Calder was leaving on a case tonight and she'd said she'd go home to supper and leave Ellen to mind the shop.

She was walking briskly when Tony Bradshaw saw her and brought his car smartly to a stop beside her.

"Taxi, lady?"

She said. "You have the nicest way of being just where you ought to be when you ought to be. Of course! I'd be delighted to take your taxi."

He moved his bag off the seat and brushed it with his handkerchief. "I'd have had it recovered if I'd known this would happen." he told her.

"I can see that Pam's been teaching you to make pretty speeches."

"The things she's taught me," he murmured.

He swung the car in a half circle and headed back for Main street.

"I was on my way home, darling." she said. "Not to the shop."

"It's not much longer this way. I'd like to get your opinion of something."

He turned off Main at Linden street and piloted the car through the nicest, new residential section of the town, heading at last up a slight hill where, half-way, he brought it to a stop and turned to look at her.

"I always have opinions and express them at the slightest opportunity." she'd assured him.

With a wave of his hand, he said, "Behold the impressive framework of South Wintridge's first and only apartment house, in the making."

Barbara beheld the red-brick structure with admiration. She said, "I thought you were only interested in building hospitals."

For a moment his mouth was grim, but a moment after a rather sheepish grin took form at its corners. He said, "You take this first floor corner apartment. It has three exposures, two bedrooms, kitchen, dining alcove, living room and two rooms that can be used for the office. It has oil heat, hot water, decorated to suit the tenant. What do you think of it?"

Barbara, with laughing, puzzled lights in her eyes, before she thought it was undoubtedly splendid.

"Good neighborhood, too," he told her proudly. "There's a fine new school a block away and there'll be gardens way back there for the children to play in."

"I think it will be very fine. Are you trying to rent it to me?"

As casually as he could manage to keep his voice, he said, "I was just wondering what you thought about its being a good place for a young doctor with matrimony on his mind."

Barbara said evenly—and there were no more laughing lights in her eyes—"I think it would be lovely—if you could swing it."

She knew, of course, that he could. Surely the Kilcrans would continue to give Pamela...

Tony was saying, and now the grin was breaking out all over his face. "Of course I'd expect my wife to do her part. She's got lots of money. She..."

Barbara interrupted. "Tony, I must get home. My poor child will be starved."

They didn't say very much on the rest of the way home.

Barbara let herself into her big, lonely house and was conscious of being very tired indeed. Her limbs felt too heavy to move and her head was beginning to ache so badly that it seemed to put a pressure, like a lump, in her throat.

She gave Sonny his supper and listened attentively to the prattle of his day's activities and the lump thickened in her throat. She missed so much of her little boy, being away from him all day.

Well, there was no use feeling sorry for herself. She was the luckiest girl in the world to be able to support him. At least, she was able to give him a healthy life. If they lived in the city...

She had a vision of the gardens that would be back of the new apartment house. And of herself, watching Sonny from the kitchen window and listening for another step. Another voice on an office telephone. And counting the calls at a doctor's door.

But she had her old house and she had her shop. She had seen the slow revival of her business that had been so nearly lost. She was a very lucky girl. Never again would she let anything jeopardize that business.

She went up the stairs, reading a story book to him until his eyes dropped and she could lullaby him, her own eyes on the wood-burning fireplace. She pulled the blanket over his sleeping form and undressed, taking a book to bed to read herself. It had fallen from her hands and she had been asleep for hours when she was awakened by the sound of car wheels on her gravel drive.

The drive and the garage were on the other side of the house.

When she got up to go and see what had awakened her, her feet touched the icy floor and she fumbled for her slippers. Sleepily she searched for a warm robe and thrust her arms into it. She looked into Sonny's room for an instant and then went to the end of the hall to look out the window.

The snow was beginning to sift down. It was already lying like a ragged carpet on the grass.

As she came through the hall she had not heard the car wheels on gravel, but when she reached the window, the sound was quite clear and she saw the big outline of a car as it turned out of the drive into the road.

The top was down and she could make out the silhouette of a woman's body at the wheel. The next instant the red glow of the tail-light faded from view.

Pamela.

In the hall below, the clock struck 12 rusty notes.

Coming at midnight? But why?

It was this thought that was uppermost in Barbara's mind as she wrapped her robe around her and went back to her bedroom.

Obviously she had come and gone away at once because she saw that the house was dark and realized the lateness of the hour. But what had brought her in the first place?

Something seen and shut away in that busy hour at the shop came back to Barbara instantly as she remembered Pam's strained face.

The child had tried to talk to her about something, but she'd been so excited about Mrs. Walker's call she hadn't even thought of Pamela at the moment.

Pressing her fingers to her still aching head, Barbara tried to recall what the girl had said. Something about international law Oh, well, she would ask her tomorrow.

She drifted into dreamless, comforting sleep.

She was deep in sleep when Sheriff Skiff came to her door at eight the next morning.

wons that Can be used for the office. It has oil heat, hot water, Sonny called from the top of the wood-burning fireplace and will be stairs and she went up to him, taking