Kerry Read Online Free PDF Page A

where she kept her special treasures. If there was any money in the house, it was always kept there. Kerry found the key, fitted it into the ivory keyhole, and threw the lid back, but found nothing there but a picture of Sam Morgan, and a couple of thin letters in scrawled bold hand, tied together with silky blue ribbons. From the upper side of one glared her own name coupled with the word “love.”
    Kerry snapped the lid shut, clicked the key, and closed the drawer, her face drained of every semblance of color.
    Somehow she managed to get back to the other room and dismiss the undertaker with a promise about tomorrow. But when he was gone she sat down and groaned.
    She was still sitting there in helpless sorrow when a few minutes later her mother applied her key and entered.
    “You don’t mean to say you’ve been sitting there sulking ever since I left?”
    The mother’s voice was amused, half contemptuous, as she breezed happily in, filling the tawdry room with the scent of violets from a large bunch pinned to her coat.
    Then she caught sight of the somewhat familiar bill lying on the floor where Kerry had dropped it, duplicates of which had been coming to her at brief intervals ever since her husband’s burial.
    Kerry lifted haggard eyes.
    “Mother!” she condemned yet with a caress of hope behind the words, “haven’t you paid for my father’s funeral yet?”
    “Oh, mercy!” said Mrs. Kavanaugh in a bored tone. “Has that tiresome man been dogging my steps again? I certainly would never go to him again if all my family died. Well, you needn’t be so tragic about it. I’ve got the money to pay for it now, anyway, and then we’ll be done with him. Look, Kerry!” And she displayed a big roll of bills, fluttering her white fingers among them gloatingly, the diamond glistening gorgeously.
    “You can’t say Sam is stingy!” she caroled. “He gave me twice as much as I asked for—most of them hundred-dollar bills! Just think of it, Kerry! We shall be rich! We can buy anything we like! Just take it in your hand and see how it feels to hold as much money as that all at once!”
    But Kerry dashed the roll of bills to the floor and caught her mother’s white hands in her own frantically, gripping them so tightly that the big diamond cut into her own tender flesh like a knife.
    “Mother,” Kerry cried, “you shall never pay for my father’s burial with a cent of that man’s money! What have you done with the money Father left with the lawyer for that purpose? Where is it? I know there was plenty. I saw it myself. What did you do with it?”
    “Well, if you must know, you silly, I paid for my fur coat with it. The man wouldn’t let it go on a charge because of that trouble we had about the bill there last year, so I had to pay for it or let it go, and it was too good a bargain—”
    “But Mother! How did you think we would ever get the undertaker paid?”
    “Oh, I thought he could wait till the next annuity came in. Those undertakers are all rich!” said the woman carelessly, beginning to preen herself at the mirror again.
    “This hat is certainly becoming, Kerry, isn’t it? And these violets. What a heavenly smell! I declare I’ve just been starved for flowers all these years. Come, Kerry, get out of that grouch. Pick up that money from the floor. I’ll pay that bill tonight if that will satisfy you. Come, sit down. I want to tell you what a wonderful time I have had!”
    But Kerry held her head high and looked her Mother sternly in the eyes.
    “You will
never
pay for my father’s burial with money from that man!” she said in a low, steady tone.
    Then she marched straight over those loathsome hundred-dollar bills to her bedroom door, and with her hand on the knob stood watching her mother.
    Mrs. Kavanaugh laughed disagreeably and gathered up her money.
    “Of course you would make a scene,” she said in a high, excited voice, “but you’ll come to it. You’ll be glad enough of the money