The Criminal Read Online Free PDF

bowl and got the shells out of them. I felt quite well by the time I'd finished. It always makes me feel better to break something, and this solved the dinner problem. We'd just have a nice dish of scrambled eggs.
    I had a piece of toast and some more coffee, and got dressed. I took another look at the letter from Miss Brundage, and then I tore it up and flushed it down the toilet. Miss Brundage was Bob's homeroom teacher, and it seemed to me that if she did her job and minded her own business she wouldn't have so much time to write letters to parents. Naturally, I didn't tell Al about the letter. He fusses at Bob enough as it is. And I didn't say anything to Bob about it. It wasn't necessary. If a mother doesn't know her own son, who does? Some teacher, a miss? Someone that's never had a child in her life?
    Well, of course, she may have had some for all I know. She probably should have had some. These women that go on year after year, staying single and dodging their responsibilities and putting almost everything they make on their backs, well, I've got some ideas about them. They may think they're fooling people, but they don't fool me.
    I'm not saying she is that way, mind you. I don't believe in making judgments on people until I know all the facts. But it certainly seems strange.
    Anyway, people that are always so anxious to criticize someone else shouldn't complain when people criticize them.
    Judge not lest you be judged, I always say.
    Well, I wore my black and green plaid and that yellow short coat and I guess it does make me look like a checkerboard inside of a banana skin, but I just couldn't help it. I imagine I look quite as well as most women my age. As long as you're clean and neat and respectable, that's what counts.
    I don't know why in the world I ever bought the darned things.
    So, finally, I left the house, and I don't know yet how I made it after everything that had happened to me. But I did though-what a morning!-and of course the first thing I saw was Fay Eddleman out on the walk in front of their place.
    Honestly. I don't know why she just doesn't set up a tent out there and live in it. I don't know how she ever gets her housework done. Why, I've watched her all morning or all afternoon sometimes, just to see if she ever did go in. And she never did. She'd just go in to eat or something, and then she'd rush right back out again. I've watched her, and I know.
    First the milkman comes by, and he has to stop and talk. And then it's the bakery man and the mailman and the garbage man, and, oh, I don't know what all. Anything that wears pants. And they can't get away from her. She'll stand there and she'll talk and she'll talk, and I wouldn't want to say anything definite but I just wish I could read lips sometimes. Anyone that acts like she does, there's something funny going on.
    If the weather isn't forty below zero or something, she'll wear some kind of shorts or slacks, just as tight as she can get 'em. And those sweaters she wears: I think she must have to grease herself to get them on. But whatever she's wearing, it doesn't make much difference. She still doesn't look like she had anything on.
    She knows it, too, and don't you think she doesn't! It's deliberate.
    She'll stand out there with that reddish brown hair blowing all over her face (naturally, it's hennaed, the hair I mean) and she'll look up at someone-a man, of course- with those reddish brown eyes, and she'll say something and then she'll wiggle. Giggle and wiggle all over. She'll pull her chin down into her bosom (and she doesn't have to pull it very far, believe me) and she'll roll her eyes up at this man and say something. And then he'll say something, and she'll wiggle. Wiggle and giggle. And it actually makes you blush to watch her.
    Well, she waited until I was almost on top of her, and then she acted like she'd just then seen me.
    "Why, Martha!" she said. "Of all things, darling! Where in the world have you been keeping yourself?"
    I