Enchanted Spring Read Online Free PDF

office was in an uproar, for several of the men and women there had had a glimpse of Silas behind his desk, the gun at his temple. Carey huddled against the door while Margaret flung herself forward and knocked the gun aside just as it spoke.
    Carey had a confused impression of her father staring at Margaret with dazed, sick eyes. And then she saw him slump forward, his head on his arms. Carey covered her face with her shaking hands and her knees trembled beneath her.
    Dazedly, dimly she was conscious of events going on about her. The uproar in the office outside, quelled by a furious speech from Margaret; the arrival of a doctor; a moment later, two brisk, white-coated young men carrying a stretcher on which her father was placed and borne out of the room. And then she was aware of Margaret shaking her by the shoulders. Shaking her savagely, as though she wanted very much to hurt her. Margaret’s homely face was very near her own and Margaret’s eyes blazed back of her rimmed spectacles.
    “Snap out of it, Carey. Do you hear me? Snap out of it! He — he’s — not hurt. He — fainted. It’s a collapse — physical and almost mental. But — the gun went off harmlessly. Do you hear me?”
    Carey tried to twist free of Margaret’s hands. “Don’t! You’re — you’re hurting me,” she stammered.
    Margaret’s face was livid with hate. And the shock of that look in Margaret’s face did more to jerk Carey back from the borders of hysteria than anything else could possibly have done.
    “Hurting you?” The woman’s voice stung like a whiplash. “I wish I could wring your neck. Maybe it might wake you up — you spoiled, egotistical little
brat!”
    “Why — why — how dare you — ”
    “Don’t you how dare
me,
Carey Winslow, or I swear I’ll do something I’ve wanted to do since the first day I set eyes on you. I’ll turn you down across my knee and whale the daylights out of you. Come on, we’ve got to get going. You want to be home when they get your father there, don’t you?”
    “I — why — yes, of course,” whispered Carey, so bewildered by what was happening all about her that she wasn’t quite conscious just what part she was playing in it.
    “Then come on.”
    In the taxi driving uptown, Margaret sat on the edge of her seat, as though by the exertion of sheer will she was hurrying the taxi on its way. Carey sat huddled in a corner away from her, watching her with wide, stunned eyes, for suddenly Margaret seemed a rather terrifying stranger. She had never paid much attention to this dumpy, plain woman who had been her father’s most trusted employee since Carey’s babyhood. She had spoken to her with careless courtesy and forgotten her the next moment. But now — Margaret had changed somehow.
    Margaret, feeling that wide, frightened gaze upon her, turned her head and there was the faintest suggestion of a smile on her homely face. “Sorry I roughed you up — no, that’s not true. I’m tickled to death I had the chance. You’ve had it coming to you for a long time — ”
    Carey fought for composure. “That’s — that’s a strange thing for you to say — ”
    “Look here, aren’t you even human?” demanded Margaret. “Don’t you realize that you alone are responsible for what happened to your father? And for what — almost happened?”
    Carey cried out against that, but Margaret raced on sharply, as though the thought had rankled for a long time in her heart:
    “Of course you have. By your crazy extravagance — driving him on and on and on. I still don’t see how even an addlepate like you could throw away the money you’ve spent in the last two or three years. Did you know that your debut party alone cost seventy thousand dollars? And that the clothes you’ve bought this last six months cost another twenty-five thousand? To say nothing of other expenses you’ve incurred. No wonder your father has all but bankrupted himself trying to keep the business going, with