Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/110

 "Listen, Harry, I don't want to go here." MacCurdy's was a bootleg joint and everyone knew it.

"Oh Lucy, honey, the hamburgers are the nuts here."

Well, she might as well go in. The lemonade Harry ordered made her dizzy, something was in it besides the lemon. It made her feel warm but not hungry. The hamburgers were better at the depot diner.

On the way home, Harry stopped the car on a side-street short cut to get a blanket. He opened it, put it over his shoulders of all things and then, before she knew it, was lying on top of her on the seat.

"Let me, let me," he whispered hoarsely, and held her wrists in one rough hand.

She stretched out her legs close together and locked her ankles. Not this way, not this way, she determined, and sank her strong white teeth into Harry's nose.

"You devil, I'll kill you!"

"You just take me home, Harry Burden, and take your dirty old hands off me."

Soon she would have to learn about it, but not from Harry Burden. It would be a lesson, not a battle with a greedy boy about whom she felt nothing.

Harry didn't get out of the auto when they reached Aunt Mabel's but drove away sullenly when she stepped to the curb. Lucy was annoyed. Harry and his old sleighride party. Fine thing!

As the detonating din of Harry's auto thinned in the distance Lucy waited to see if a light would go on in Aunt Mabel's room. It was a relief to have a minute alone in the clean cold night to sort events of the evening to relay to Mother. Well, everything except about Harry in the auto. Mother would worry.

Mr. Bertrand had had a miserable evening. First of all he had to put his old woman in her place for whining because he now drank gin instead of cheaper beer.

"I earn the money and can do what I want with it. If you don't like it, get out and earn some yourself."

Mrs. Bertrand gasped. He never had spoken to her like that before. She slaved and slaved to make a good Christian home for him and his child and this was her thanks. She had seen it coming ever since Mae Claudel and that girl came to live next door. Mae Claudel 98