Blue Ruin by Grace Livingston Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

4
    J ustine Whipple stood fuming at the east window of the big old sitting room, anxiously staring up at the street, her old-fashioned hunter’s case watch open in her hand. She seemed like a coffee pot about to boil over. In fact she had boiled over several times in the last five minutes. Grandma Whipple was enjoying it in her corner, her eyes twinkling, as she set a patch neatly by the thread under a thin place in one of the everyday tablecloths.
    “There is just five minutes left!” declared Justine. “No, I’m mistaken, only four and a half. If he doesn’t come then I shall call up a taxi and go for them myself! It seems outrageous that I can’t depend on my own nephew for a little thing like that, and all because of a silly girl.”
    “He isn’t your own nephew!” broke in Amelia furiously, arriving at that moment from upstairs where she had been powdering her red face and shiny nose with some powder she had bought a few days ago after prolonged study of the advertisements in her fashion magazine. She was a little nervous about appearing downstairs with it on, for Grandma Whipple’s eyes were sharp and her tongue was sharper, but Justine’s words lashed away her shyness, and she rushed to the fray in defense of her son.
    “He isn’t even your own cousin !” she added viciously. “It’s a pity you wouldn’t remember that! He has no obligation whatever to come home from anything he wishes to do, silly or not, to take his own car, which he had washed and had to pay for, at your request , to go after your company! But he said he would do it, and he will! He never failed to keep his word, did he? Answer me that! Did you ever know him to fail to be on time when he promised? You know that’s one of his almost failings, to be exactly on time and no more. He says it’s a sin to waste time unnecessarily!”
    “H’m!” sniffed Justine. “A sin! When he’s been wasting a whole day dawdling after a girl in the woods!”
    “And you want him to go dawdling after another!” said his mother with a pin between her lips while she energetically reached behind her ample waist for the belt of her clean apron which she was preparing to pin over her best black and white voile dress. “Oh, you’re the most consistent person I know! And he ought to be late just to punish you for not trusting him. Did you ever find him untrustworthy? Answer me that!”
    “Well, yes, I did!” declared Justine angrily facing about toward Amelia with fire in her eye. “Yes, I certainly did!”
    “You did?” roared Dana’s mother turning almost white with rage.
    “I did! “
    “When?”
    “Once when I gave him a letter to mail. He carried it in his sweater pocket for a whole week and wore it all out so I had to rewrite it. It was an important letter, too!”
    “Humph!” sniffed Amelia with a flirt of her head turning toward the dining table and flinging the clean cloth deftly over the table pad as if the conversation had become too trivial to be worthy of her further attention.
    “Ten years ago! Dana was nothing but a child then. You never will forget that. You do hold grudges a long time, don’t you? Holding a grudge against a child! And I remember that letter. I found it myself in his pocket when I went to mend the sweater. It was some ridiculous answer to a fake ad, something about removing wrinkles and making you look young again. Important! Fool nonsense! There comes Dana now! I knew he would be here on time!”
    “Well, he’s a half a minute behind,” said Justine severely, consulting the watch, “and he isn’t here yet! Besides he’s got to walk down to the garage after the car. I doubt if he can make it. He better phone for a cab.”
    “Justine, you certainly are the most aggravating person alive! What’s half a minute? Your watch is probably fast anyway. You always keep it that way.”
    “A half a minute is a long time when one has to wait on a strange platform in a strange city,” whined Justine petulantly.