“I guess everybody else got her something, too,” Margaret said. “Of course we will keep them for her. I got her a little French party coat. It will be just as good next year as this. Anyhow as Jimmie says, I had to get it.”
“I got her slipper buckles,” Gertrude admitted. “She has always wanted them.”
“I got her the Temple Shakespeare,” Beulah added. “She was always carrying around those big volumes.”
“You’re looking better, Beulah,” Margaret said. “Are you feeling better?”
“Jimmie says I’m looking more human. I guess perhaps that’s it,—I’m feeling more—human. I needed humanizing—even at the expense of some—some heartbreak,” she said bravely.
Margaret crossed the room to take a seat on Beulah’s chair-arm, and slipped an arm around her. 301
“You’re all right if you know that,” she whispered softly.
“I thought I was going to bring you Eleanor herself,” Peter said. “I got on the trail of a girl working in a candy shop out in Yonkers. My faithful sleuth was sure it was Eleanor and I was ass enough to believe he knew what he was talking about. When I got out there I found a strawberry blonde with gold teeth.”
“Gosh, you don’t think she’s doing anything like that,” Jimmie exclaimed.
“I don’t know,” Peter said miserably. He was looking ill and unlike himself. His deep set gray eyes were sunken far in his head, his brow was too white, and the skin drawn too tightly over his jaws. “As a de-tec-i-tive, I’m afraid I’m a failure.”