Harriet and the Piper

by Kathleen Thompson Norris

"Oh, she has the most wonderful clothes!" It was the old Nina's voice. "She doesn't spend much, but she goes to the BEST places, and they know her there, and the women at Hatson's will say, 'I've got a gown for you, Mrs. Tabor!' She picked out this negligee, and she picked out another gown for me that you haven't seen. That was one thing that made trouble between her and her husband," Nina said, eagerly. "She can't help looking smart, and he used to get so jealous, and she told me that she told the judge exactly what she spent for clothes the last year, and he said that that was less than his wife spent, mind you, and he said he didn't know how she did it! And that was the judge, that had never laid eyes on her before! She used to cry and cry, after she got her divorce, because she said that she thought there was a sort of disgrace about it. But this judge in Nevada said that a man like Jack Tabor ought to be horsewhipped!"

"Has she--been here very much?" Harriet said, after a moment.

"Oh, lots! She loves to be here, and I can't think why," Nina said, "because people are all crazy to get her, and she could go to the most wonderful dinners and things. But she really is just like a girl, herself; sometimes we burst right out laughing, because we think exactly the same about things! And she just loves picnics, and to let her hair down--and she's so funny! You'll just love her when you know her--"

Nina, Harriet reflected, had had a thorough dose of poison. It would take, like many diseases, more poison to cure her, a counter dose. Going to her room to change to one of the new gowns, Harriet had a moment of contempt for the new-found intimate, who could so unscrupulously play upon the girl's hungry soul. But with this situation it was possible to cope; there was definite comfort in the fact that Nina had not mentioned Royal Blondin.

Brave in the new gown, whose lustreless black velvet made even more brilliant her matchless skin, Harriet went to find Ward. She met instead one of his house-guests, Corey Eaton, a man some years older than Ward, a big, rawboned, unscrupulous youth, with a wild and indiscriminate laugh. Mr. Eaton, greeting her enthusiastically, admitted frankly that he was just up from bed, and that he had been "lit up like a battleship" last night, and that he still felt the effects of it.

"Mr. Eaton," Harriet said, in an undertone, making another strategic decision, "come in here to the library, will you? I want to speak to you."

"When you speak to me thus," said Corey Eaton, passionately, "I can refuse you naught!"

But he sobered instantly into tremendous gravity at Harriet's first confidence. She told him simply of Isabelle's death.

"Well, that surely is rotten--the poor old boy!" said Corey, affectionately. "Ward's mad about his mother, too! Well, say, what do you know about that? We'll beat it, Miss Field, Nixon and I. We came in my car and we'll go to the Jays' for dinner. Say, that is tough, though, isn't it?"

It was not eloquent, but it was sincere, and Harriet made her thanks so personal and so flattering that the young man could only fervently push his plans for departure, swearing secrecy, and evidently touched by being taken into her confidence. The fastnesses were yielding one after another; Harriet could have laughed as she left him at the foot of the stairs. Bottomley respectfully addressed her as she turned back into the hall: