Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/132

 able to pick up such an enormous woman and still retain his dignity.

To Timothy's relief, Mary Blaine's feet held out, although the stairs screeched in anguish at her ponderous weight. The one defect in that house was the squeaky stairs. When Templeton had decided to have them fixed Dorothy had protested. At the time she was only ten years old.

"Please don't spoil the stairs, Daddy," she pleaded. "That's the voice of the house. It makes it seem alive. I like the way the stairs shout back at you. They are very saucy stairs."

Templeton Blaine had laughed heartily. Such queer ideas pleased him. After that of course the stairs simply could not be altered, not even when Dorothy grew older.

Mary's room was large and spacious. It had two large windows that faced upon the Avenue. Two smaller ones faced upon a court. In the center of the room was a table with a lamp upon it. On one side was a rocking-chair upholstered in flowered cretonne. On the other side was a boudoir chair of the same material. The walls were panelled, tinted cream-color, and decorated with two etchings, one of Westminster Abbey, the other of Trinity Church.

"I'll toss up a penny," Mary muttered, "to see which I'll attend."

Then her eye lighted upon the bed. It was a stupendous affair, a genuine antique for which Templeton had paid a great deal of money.

"Bluebeard and his seven wives must have slept in this bed," she chuckled, "before he commenced killing them off to make more room. That is a bed that fulfills its lot in life. If I sleep in it I'll turn into a regular Rip Van Winkle."

Then Terese appeared upon the scene. She was all apologies.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she said. "I never dreamed you'd be here so soon. I thought you'd have a lot of legal formalities to go through with at Mr. Reardon's office."

"No," Mary Blaine told her, "he was very nice. He told me we could go over the details of the estate at my convenience when I wasn't all tired out and we had more time. All he did was to telephone Dorothy that I was on the way up. He couldn't