The Argosy, Vol. 82 No. 2 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

GETTING AWAY FROM THOMPSON. filled eyes glared at her aunt for an instant and her voice struck a high, hysterical pitch as she cried: “There’s every objection on earth to this man and I won’t let him claim me! I won’t be claimed or—’”’ “Jane!” Mr. Porter-Preston interjected sternly. “You won’t let him get me?” Jane asked her uncle, quite piteously. “Nothing shall harm you,” Uncle Hor- ace stated, ‘but first of all, let us under- stand this—this amazing thing. Be seated, my dear, and control yourself.” Jane’s knees, it seemed, were but too willing to obey. “Tt is true that you are married, Jane?” “Ves,” “ “Lately?” “Nearly a year ago,” Jane shuddered. “Where?” “Up in Batesford.” “When you were stopping with Edith Barr?” Aunt Martha put in. Vac ,’? “And she never told, either!” said Mrs. Porter-Preston. “She never knew!” “Just let me sift this thing, Martha, please,’ Uncle Horace requested. “Jane is upset; and—where did you meet this Mr. Thompson, Jane?”’ “In Batesford.” “How long had you known him when you married him?” “About ten minutes,” said the astonish- ing niece. “Well, what sort of man—” Uncle Hor- ace gasped. ‘Who on earth is he?” ‘“He’s a burglar; that’s his business, I think!” Jane said simply. And then, because she was young and safe for the moment at least and usually quite sane, Jane ceased her trembling and laughed outright, albeit there was no over- whelming mirth in the laugh. “Please don’t look at me like that,’”’ she implored rather unsteadily. “It wasn’t any- thing that I could help and I hoped—oh, I don’t know what I hoped, but I'll tell you about it.” “You should have told us about it rather sooner,” her uncle suggested, gravely, Jane smiled miserably. “You'll see in a minute why I didn’t,” she said. “It was really Edith Barr’s fault —or the fault of that French couple that kept house for her, anyway. You see, they 199 left that day after some sort of argument and Edith and I had Edie’s country house all to ourselves. Her mother didn’t come up till days after—after it happened.” She paused. Mrs. Porter-Preston, whose hands had folded, delivered herself quite severely: “T suppose that Edith is a prominent artist and wealthy and has a right to a cer- tain amount of eccentricity, if her people insist on indulging it; but I have always thought that permitting her to own a dozen little houses in a dozen villages, just for the sake of living in them and gathering her wretched atmosphere, was rather in- sane. It’s bad enough for the girl to travel around alone as she does, but when she drags her friends to a benighted hole like this Batesford—” “Oh, Batesford’s pretty enough, up there among the mountains, and Edith didn’t ac- tually drag me there,”’ Jane smiled forlornly. “We were having a nice, quiet little time together, until this happened. However, that’s what the French pair did, and it left Edie and me all alone—and of course that was the night of the Marchley dinner, away over at White,Falls. I had a wretched headache and didn’t want to go anyway, so when the Winslows came for Edith with their motor, I made her go.”’ “Leaving you quite alone in the house?” Aunt Martha inquired. “It never occurred to me to be afraid,” said Jane. ‘‘The house next door isn’t forty feet away, you know, and it was all so peaceful and still that I really enjoyed the evening, with the crickets chirping outside and the trees sighing. I meant to sit up for Edith, for she couldn’t get back before one o’clock;.but just before midnight the tele- phone rang. “You see, the Winslow’s car broke an axle or something and couldn’t be fixed for days, and they couldn’t get another for love or money. They had to spend the night in a farmhouse—and Edie was all excitement at the idea of my being there alone.” “Ts it possible?” Mrs. Porter-Preston asked tartly. “Tt didn’t worry me,” sighed Jane. “I told her to go to bed on the horsehair couch they’d fixed, and that I’d be quite all right —and then I went to bed myself and fell sound asleep. It must have been after two in the morning when I woke up suddenly listening. One does that, sometimes, you know. Go OOOKS AMNG (C@)