Stranger within the Gates Read Online Free PDF Page A

the English professors. He was talking in a low tone as if it were confidential. I shouldn't have been listening, of course; that is, I didn't know I was listening until I heard your name, and naturally my attention was drawn. So, you see, I feel very much flattered that you have asked me--"
    "Say," he interrupted, "if you're going to get that way----"
    Sylvia suddenly laughed.
    "No, I'll not pain you with further praise," she said, "but seriously, I just wanted you to realize that if I don't go it's not because I don't want to. I certainly do. I'm just afraid of how things are going to turn out. However, I'll do my best."
    She gave him a bright smile as they parted and went to their different classes, and the morning was less gloomy because of their brief talk. How grand it would be if she could only go to that concert with Rance Nelius! But of course, she couldn't. Even if Mother didn't let Rex bring his wife home, there would likely be a great gloom over the house, and it wouldn't be very kind or considerate for her to run away, supposedly to have a good time. Well, at least it didn't have to be decided at once. The time was three days off. Maybe Rex and----well--Rex wouldn't have to come home yet. She could talk it over with Mother and see what she thought about it.
    She settled to her studying, but all the morning whenever the thought of what Rex had done hit her consciousness with a sudden dull thud, there was also a luminousness in her thoughts that put a light of golden hope into things as she remembered Rance and his invitation.
    But, oh, if things were only normal. If Rex hadn't written Mother right out of the blue that way that he was married! How could Rex have done a thing like that? Rex, who loved Mother so much! Oh, maybe it wasn't so. Maybe he just wrote that for a joke! Could he be so cruel?
    And then it was all to do over again, her reasoning.
    Â 
    ***
    The high school was full of the atmosphere of Christmas. Holiday cheer pervaded the atmosphere. It met Stan and Fae as they mounted the steps and went down the hall to their respective rooms. Spicy odor of spruce trees, festive garlands of laurel ropes and holly wreaths, mysterious packages carried furtively and hidden in desks.
    "Stan, Miss Marian wants you to go up to the assembly room and help decorate the big tree on the platform." An excited brown-eyed maiden accosted Stan as he reached the door of his classroom. "She says it's necessary to have someone at the head of it that has some sense and a little bit of artistic ability. I'm glad she picked you instead of Rue Pettigrew. He takes so many airs on himself and thinks he can lord it over everybody."
    Ordinarily, Stan was quite willing to perform such offices for Miss Marian, who was his favorite teacher. And it would usually have been twice welcome to get such a message from the lips of Mary Elizabeth Remley, who had sweet brown eyes and didn't seem to know it herself; in fact, he had just now been thinking of letting her wear his class pin.
    But the cloud of the family catastrophe had been resting heavily upon him on the way to school, and he drew a frown.
    "Heck!" he said, annoyed. "I don't see how I'm going to do that. I haven't quite finished copying my essay, and it has to be handed in today." He put on an old, worried look and met her eyes, the brown eyes with a sudden disappointed look in them.
    "Oh!" she said. She had thought he would be pleased. "Well, I'll go and tell her. Perhaps she'll ask Hanford Edsell instead. He never gets to do anything."
    But Stan shook his head.
    "Naw! Don't say anything to her. She's got enough worries of her own. I'll manage it somehow. But, heck, can you beat it? These extras are always coming in just when you least expect them."
    "Couldn't I copy your essay, Stan? You're typing it, aren't you? I can do it without mistakes." The brown eyes met his wistfully, and Stan's face cleared into sudden sunshine.
    "Thanks, awfully, Mary Lizbeth; that's pretty swell of you