Chapter 4

Lena's parents, Molly and Jim, hadn't heard from their daughter recently. Throughout the morning, Molly tried to pressure her husband to see if Lena was all right. Finally, Jim agreed to do it.

He didn't like the idea of bothering Lena during working hours. Girls didn't like that sort of thing. It gave them the idea that their parents were interfering, still treating them like babies. There might be a store rule that girls weren't supposed to get personal calls. It might get Lena in bad. They might even dock her pay for it. It didn't seem like a good idea. But if it would satisfy Molly...

"Okay, Hon. I'll be right back," Jim said as he fastened his suspenders.

He had gone across the street to use their neighbor's phone.

When he was connected with the store, it took quite a while to get any sense out of anybody to whom he spoke. One voice asked what he wanted. Then he was connected with another voice that asked the same question. Finally some woman told him that Lena Anderson had met with an accident and had had to be taken home.

It was then that Jim got panicky. He dared not go back and tell Molly that Lena had been hurt without knowing more details. That would set Molly off for sure. The only thing he could think of to do was to ask to be connected with Dana Hall's office.

Molly was still pestering him with questions. She wouldn't give him time to get it all straightened out in his own mind, so he could tell her word for word what had been said.

"I don't understand why it was Miss Hall you talked to, Jim. She doesn't work at the store, does she? According to what Lena told us, she runs about giving lectures telling people how to fix up their houses." And that, Molly observed, was a thing she would never understand. In her opinion, a woman who didn't know how she wanted things had no business having a house.

"And where was Dana Hall himself?" During work hours, you'd think a store executive would be right there on the job. Or maybe he'd left to drive Lena to her apartment. Was that the way of it?

No, Jim said. As far as he could make out, some other girl had been taken ill and Mr. Hall had taken her home.

"Another girl, huh?" That sounded a little strange, Molly thought. She scowled at her knitting needles, wishing fervently that she could get down on her hands and knees and work in a vegetable patch. When things in life got so confused you didn't know what to make of them, it was a wonderful thing to be out in God's blessed sunshine digging in the good earth.

"If you'll just let me tell this in my own way, Molly."

Not that there was an awful lot to tell, when you came right down to it. Miss Corinne Hall had answered the phone when it rang in her brother's office. When she discovered she was speaking to Lena's father, she had gone out of her way to be friendly. "She has one of those uppity, schoolteacher voices that I never could stand in a woman," Jim interrupted himself to explain.

And she had certainly tried to keep the conversation going. First she'd explained that she'd just dropped into her brother's office to leave a message for him. Wasn't it a coincidence that Mr. Anderson should phone right at this time? She'd gone on to say how very, very anxious both she and her brother were to meet Lena's parents. Now that they were speaking to each other, why not arrange to get together as soon as possible? Why not this afternoon? She was very sure her brother could get away from the store for an hour or so. And it really was a lovely afternoon for a little drive.

"And by the way, Mr. Anderson, Lena tells me that you are looking for a house to buy. By the sheerest chance, I think I know the very place for you and Mrs. Anderson. If you like, Dana and I could show it to you today."

"Right then and there you should have set your foot down," Molly said.

"And said what?" Jim asked with playful impatience, as if this were a game in which it was Molly's role to call him down, his to defend whatever he had done. "It wouldn't have been very polite to say no, would it?" After all, it was a beautiful afternoon for a drive. And if the woman wanted to show them a nice house, you couldn't say it wasn't thoughtful of her.

Molly pursed her lips. "You could have told her, nicely of course, that you'd prefer to wait until Lena could go along with us."

Well, Jim said, there were two ways of looking at that. Miss Hall had had quite a lot to say about this house she mentioned. The impression he got was that Lena had already seen it and was crazy about it. The trouble was, she was afraid it wouldn't suit her parents.

The woman might be talking through her hat. Jim admitted that much.

On the other hand, suppose the house turned out to be just what they wanted. "We are looking for a house, Molly. If we like this one and get everything settled right away, it would be a nice surprise for Lena."

Molly shook her head. Then she put down her knitting and looked at her husband. "I don't like it," she said. "No matter what you say, there's something fishy about all this sudden friendliness, and this wonderful house you must see this very day."

"Now, sweetheart," Jim laughed, as much as to say that he knew his wife too well to take her objections seriously, "you mustn't be suspicious of people. This Miss Hall is Lena's future sister-in-law. We've got to remember that."

"I don't like the way she takes things in her own hands," Molly said.

She folded her knitting and put it away in the bag hung at the side of her chair. She got up, still a graceful and quick-moving woman in spite of her weight.

"I suppose I'd better go dress, " she said. "Since you've made the arrangements, we'll have to go. But I want you to remember what I'm saying, Jim. I don't like it. I don't like going behind Lena's back, and something tells me this interior-decorating woman is up to something."

Jim laughed again, as if determined not to let Molly's objections dampen his spirits. "Oh, come now, mama. It's just a little friendly drive in the California sun to look at a house. What could the harm be in that? What could she be up to?"

"I don't know," Molly said. "It's just something I feel in my bones. And you know as well as I do, Jim Anderson, that when I feel something in my bones I'm usually right."