II

Cherril started, looked up, smiled, then suddenly stopped smiling and wished her father was not standing just where he was, his feet far apart -making a wall between her and the kitchen door. She had felt just so when she had cut up her mother's wedding dress to play masquerade in and had been caught just as she was parading, her hair piled high, shoulders bare, train dragging behind, in front of the ornate gilt framed mirror in the attic-sort of sick, and little, and frightened.

Now his expression told her eloquently that he had been to townand someone had said to him, sort of casually, "Well, didn't see you out to the dance last night. Guess you're gettin' too old these days. But the young un's got life enough for your fun and her own, too, eh? Two fellers in one night-well, that ain't so slow!"

Gish. But she renounced this delightful prank, knowing that it would in no wise allay her father's anger.

"What fellow?" she parried. "Nephi Hansen told me you made a scene at the dance last night."

He did not add that Nephi had also said that some folks might be right in strivin' to give their kids an edication and fill their gals with booklarnin' makin' 'em high falutin' and teachin' 'em city airs, but as fer him he reckoned if he could raise his Anabelle to milk a cow and make good bread he'd done his duty.

Cherril straightened.

Michael hesitated, trembled, visib ly mastered his temper.

"Cherril, can't you let your old dad give you a bit of advice? You're low's an outsider, a stranger. Nonot old enough to judge. That felbody knows anything about him 'round here except that he bought out the "Star" in Pleasantville. You don't know what he's like "

Clumsily he caressed her shoulder. She jerked from his touch, and banged the yellow bowl down on the table.

"I am old enough to choose my own friends. I don't need to marry him, you know!"

Her father was furious. He had humbled himself to argue with her, to conciliate and she his eyes narrowed and he swallowed twice.

"Don't you ever dare see him again!"

"I will, too, see him-whenever I want!"

Agatha portended something very dreadful at the breaking point.

All Sunday afternoon Cherril waited expectantly for the phone to

room.

Later, Agatha talked patiently to Cherril.

"Father has admitted he was a little hasty. Cherril, you do try him dreadfully. He said he'd rather raise ten like the others than one red-headed Cherril. But he loves you, dear. If only you two could forget that you are so much alike in stubbornness you'd just adore each other and get along like angels."

"But, Agatha, why does he always"

"And why do you? Now, Cherril, don't mention that man again, and just pretend nothing has happened, and maybe we'll have peace for a little while!"

Cherril was silent for a long time. "Agatha" she slipped her arm around her sister and nestled her head in "the comforting place" on Agatha's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I make up my mind to be dreadfully good and then-well, I just up and do something awful and I just can't help it. When I get that way I just want to rush into it and I can't think or stop. I guess I was just I guess I was just born bad!"

Agatha pinched her arm and hug ged her.

"Remember old Uncle Ike used to say nobody's responsible for the disposition they're born with but they are for the one they die with" and she thought that a repentant, Cherril was the most irresistably lovely thing one could find anywhere.

So Cherril apologized and was a veritable angel all that day and the next—an unusual strain that she told

do anything she wanted with any man -and she wouldn't for worlds have confessed how much she wanted to talk to John-and incidentally to walk into meeting with him that night and be very lovely to Annabelle. But John did not call. Consequently, Cherril complained of a headache and refused, decidedly, to go to church.

She watched the family depart in the Ford. Then she played the piano and sang and pretended to be very gay. She didn't finish any songjust banged out snatches of tunes, and the empty house echoed her voice.

Then she curled up in a chair and read a page chosen at random in a school history. She walked round the new oak dining table and looked out of the window at the mountains in the last glow of fading sunligh on the very topmost peaks. Then she chose an angle and critically surmother done in crayons when they veyed the parlor. Her father and heavy black frames. Her Aunt Sally were young looked solemnly out of looked sadly from beneath a huge yellow pompadour. A photograph of the floral offerings at her mother's funeral was slightly smoked from hanging above the fat black stove. The furniture was stiff, orderly, mathematical, solemn.

"Oh, gee!" she sighed and stretched her arms.

She thumbed through "Heart Songs."

"How you scared me!"

"Thought maybe you'd like a ride -it's a wonderful evening and I've private information that there's going to be an unparalleled moon by and by."

Cherril considered only an instant. If her father came back and found them and remembered that she had refused to go to church on account of a headache, he would never for an instant believe that she had not arranged the whole thing. And how could she get him to leave? And anyway—an eager sparkle leaped to her eyes.

"I'll go!"

She dashed up stairs, hastily mussed her bed, arranged a couple of pillows under the covers and put books for the feet. Then she ran down with a light care-free heart. Could anything be jollier than an escapade like this?

Kenneth lifted her easily into the "bug" and they were off.

"Speed-just as fast as you can!" cried Cherril. "Gee, but it's good to get out and be free-and just go!"

The following morning Cherril was up before she was called, and she hummed while she turned pancakes. When she and Aagatha were alone, Agatha said quietly, "Cherril, dear, hadn't you better be careful? I didn't tell father about last night, but another time-"

Cherill pretended surprise, and then she confided in Agatha.

"But the house was so lonesome.

And he is so interesting. Agatha, he knows about everything-art and literature. He wants to go to New York and be an artist-he told me all about it. And he's going to bring me some books. Agatha, he's the nicest man I've ever known."

"Anyone can be a fine man for two evenings. They're different when you know them better."

For three weeks John Williams paid no attention to Cherril. She pretended the utmost indifference, but she was piqued just the same. She liked John and she was honestly sorry, now, that she had hurt him.

Several times during the three weeks she met Kenneth secretlywent walking with him down the road and into the canyon lane, drove to the neighboring town and enjoyed a second-run movie, learned to drive the bug and triumphantly took it staggering down the road.

She had a private circulating library, too, under the currant bushes at the corner of the lot, where Kenneth left new books and took the ones she left there after she had read them. Usually there was a clever scrawly note in each book for her and once he left a copy of the "Rubiayat" beautifuly illustrated by Brangwyn, for her to keep.

She read everything he brought, new books of poetry-Eunice Tienjen, Richard La Gallienne, and Rabindraneth Tagore; stories and novels that were different and told of strange lands she longed to see; lives of artists. Cherril was especially delighted with the mischievous, unconquerable Whistler and thought her own temperament very like his. She was awakening to new worlds-expanding in a world of imagination.

At school, Cherril had read what she had to had thought of a library as a necessary nuisance where one