Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/168

150 and he hastened to shunt him back. “Sure,” he said in cheerful agreement; “sure it is—but what happened?”

“What happened? Oh—oh, yes!” Carl brought himself back to the present with an obvious effort. “Sure, I ’ll tell you what happened. Well, there was a girl there named Elaine Marston. She was n’t staying with the folks I was, but they knew her, so I saw a lot of her. See?”

“Sure.” Hugh wished he would hurry up. Carl did n’t usually wander all over when telling a story. This must be something special.

“Well, I saw lots of her. Lots. Pretty girl, nice family and everything, but she liked her booze and she liked to pet. Awful hot kid. Well, one night we went to a dance, and between dances we had a lot of gin I had brought with me. Good; stuff, too. I bought it off a guy who brought it! down from Canada himself. Where was I? Oh, yes, at the dance. We both got pie-eyed; I was all liquored up, and I guess she was, too. After; the dance was over, I dared her to walk over tc South Bristol—that’s just across the island, yoi know—and then walk back again. Well, we had n’t gone far when we decided to sit down. We were both kinda dizzy from the gin. You have to go through the woods, you know, and it’s dark as hell in there at night. ... We sat down among some ferns and I began to pet her. Don’t know