Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/327

 found Mrs. Russell. It's not so strange to me now as it was. Mother was living by having been married to him and taking money from him but really doing nothing abroad or at home but spending his money; not a committee, not a directorate she would have been on, except for father's money; Mrs. Russell at least did not want him for money. Let us go in now, Gregg."

He pointed the canoe shoreward. "You're staying on at Clearedge Street?"

"I don't know. I've gathered all sorts of understandings, you see, Gregg; but I don't seem to know any better what to do. Father's life's not mine; nor mother's; nor Billy's; nor Clara's, much as I like her—love her, Gregg. She'll always be a friend of mine; but I don't honestly like to make a living selling Bostrock's Business Boosters and calling Jen Cordeen's a home. I'm sick—homesick, Gregg, often; I admit it. I want—I want so what I had or thought I had. I want to go back now and get it all back. Oh, that's silly, silly; of course I can't."

"It's not silly," Gregg denied gruffly; but that was all he could say. Here he was, without a job, in debt, with cash in his pocket fifty-eight cents now and cash in prospect absolutely nothing. So he clung tight to his paddle, as on that night when he drove with her beside him to Clearedge Street he had clung tight to his steering-wheel, to keep himself from touching her; and he held tight shut his lips.

"I'm going to have a talk with Mr. Rinderfeld to-morrow evening," she told him after a minute. "He's been a wise, true friend to me from the very first, Gregg; sometimes he's said, because he's had to say, hard things, but he's always said them as considerately as he could; and always they seem to prove true. I said