“She used to help Miss Pringle in the library, didn’t she? I must have been about eight years old when I got my first library card. A girl named Mary made it out. I remember how nicely she printed my name.”
“That was Mary all right.”
He spoke tenderly as if he had really loved her. But he claimed he loved Meta, too. Judy supposed it was possible to love two people at the same time although she couldn’t imagine herself being really in love with anyone but Peter. Still, before their marriage, she hadn’t been so sure. She tried to listen sympathetically but all the time there was that doubt in her mind.
“Sure I planned to marry Meta, but when she didn’t keep our date and managed to be out every time I telephoned, what could I think? I turned to Mary for sympathy, and it soon ripened into love. It often happens,” Danny’s father declared. “We had some good years together. Now, after six more years, I’m back home again, and trying to pick up the pieces.”
It was an unfortunate sentence. Just then Judy noticed the pieces, not of a shattered romance, but pieces of broken furniture. They were scattered here and there about the yard.
“Beavers,” Peter commented. “You can see their trails through the tall grass.”
“They didn’t get any of that stuff from my house. It is a mess, though,” George Anderson admitted. “But the boys can help me clean up the yard.”
His step was almost jaunty as he walked up on the front porch and inserted his key in the lock of the front door. It opened so easily that he gave a start backwards.
“That’s odd!” he exclaimed. “I thought the lock would be rusty after all these years.”
Was this an act, or did he really think the house had been closed that long? He went in first and just stood there sniffing the strong scent of varnish and glue that filled all the rooms. Judy was the first to speak.