Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/251

 For a moment she stared exploringly round the unfamiliar, bright little room crowded so horribly, cruelly close with herself, her mistake, and the life- long friend loomed so suddenly and undesirably into a man. Then with a quick, shuddery blink her eyes came flashing back wetly and wistfully to the unsolved, inscrutable face before her. Her fingers dug themselves frantically into his cheviot shoul- ders.

"Oh,Drew, Drew" she blurted out, "I am so very very very frightened ! Won't you please take me and play you are my Mother?"

"Play I am your Mother? Play I am your Mother!" The phrase ripped out of Drew s lips like an oath, and twitched itself just in time in to explosive, husky mirth. "Play I am your Mother?" The teeniest grimace over his left shoul der outlined the soft silken swish and tug of a lady's train. A most casual tap at his belt seemed to achieve instantly the fashionable hour-glass outline of feminine curves. "Play I am your Mother" He smiled and, stooping down, took Ruth's scared white face between his hands, and his smile was as bright and just about as pleasant as a zigzag of lightning from a storm-black sky.

"Ruthy dear," he said, &quot; I don t feel very much like your Mother. Now if it was a cannibal that you wanted, or a pirate, or a kidnapper, or a body-