“The Melody Girl”

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3227, 9 February 1932, Page 6

“The Melody Girl”

d n By RUTH D. GROVES, n ndnnnnnndndnnnnnnnnn:

a - (Copyright.) U :nnnnnnnnnnn

CHAPTER XV. One of the boys—Pigmy—squirmed uneasily. “Well, what you so sad about it for?” he asked. “Sad?” Beryl echoed, and laughed. “I’m crying with joy,” she said because she guessed they’d seen the glint of tears in her eyes. “Say,” Mike exclaimed suddenly. “We’ll have to send you flowers I” “Flowers?"

Beryl would, she said, come on the 11.57 train from New York. Who was going to meet her at the station? Why, Tommy was supposed to. No one in the family could drive her flivver but Beryl. Maybe she’d left it at the station. No, she hadn’t for it had a flat tyre when she went to town and the kids had just got it patched for her. Well, where was Tommy? He went out with Irene. Well, Mr Reed would get his car out and they’d give Beryl a surprise at the station. As many as could piled into it, leaving a place for Beryl, but when they returned she was not with them. She had not come on the 11.57 and that was the last train. CHAPTER XVI. Irene and Tommy, their walk ending in a quarrel, returned to her home a few minutes after the party that had gone to the station to meet Beryl. Mrs Everett was about to give herself over to anxiety when Irene took her aside and declared that it was no more than they could expect. Look how Beryl had treated them all along —not saying a word —springing the whole thing on them as if they were outsiders! That was just what they were to her anyway. She didn’t consider herself one of them. If she hadn’t felt that way she wouldn’t have kept her father’s name; she’d have called herself Beryl Everett. “Just the same,” Mrs Everett pro-

“Sure for your . . . your de —” he paused, helplessly involved with the word he’d been practicing to spring on Pigmy the first chance he got. Mike had an older sister who liked to think of her first party as her debut and call it that, too. “Debutt,” Pigmy aided him, and got nothing but a grunt of disgust in thanks. Pigmy, too, had an older sister who had been overheard discussing her friend’s “debutt.”

“Let’s leave the French until we become musketeers,” Beryl advised. “I’ll love the flowers.”

She had in mind a huge bunch of blooms, surreptitiously plucked from neighbourhood gardens. But Mike disabused her mind, of the idea that it would be done in any such fashion. "And it ain’t gonna be no measly bunch of pansies, either,” he promised. "We’re gonna get you a swell bowkay.”

And so it was—a swell bowkay with “Roses are red and violets are blue. Sugar is sweet and so are you," accompanying it. Before Beryl received it on the night of her debut, while she was struggling with a teacher to take the crudeness out of her voice, the boys worked like young Trojans to achieve its magnificence.

tested, “it’s not like Beryl to say one thing and do another. And she said she’d be home on the 11.57. She could just make it from the studio, she said, if she hurried.” Irene laughed. “If she hurried,” she repeated insinuatingly. “Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe she didn’t hurry.” “She’s here!” someone exclaimed. “There’s a car stopping before the house.”

Beryl’s debut occurred on a rainy night, thereby affording Irene an excur,sc to stay at home and listen in on the radio without admitting that she v/ouldn’t have done anything else for worlds.

Mrs Everett ran to see who it was

She’d have been much happier if she had gone out for—there was no doubt of it—Beryl had scored a success.

and just as she reached the door between the dining room and the living room Beryl came tumbling into the hall Came tumbling literally, for she had cartwheeled through the front door on a rug that slipped. When her mother reached her she was sitting in a heap of flowers, stifling a laugh in the sudden embarrassment of finding herself unexpectedly facing a roomful of people. She got up, let herself be congratulated and praised, and then apologised.

The announcer told of the telephony messages of praise that poured in and of the enthusiasm of the studio attaches, of the congratulations that were being heaped upon the young singer and of the singer’s charmingly natural acceptance of it all. She seemed, he said, neither to take it for granted as what was due her nor to feel that she was being overpraised. She was grateful, pleased, happy and “like a child before a Christmas tree” he told his audience.

‘,l didn’t* expect there’d be anyone., here but the folks,” she explained,® “and I couldn’t hold in any longer.” “No one would expect you to be dignified dear,” Irene said sweetly.

“You’d be glad, if you could see her,” he confided, “to share her joy without an iota of envy. Why, right now, folks, she’s turning her back on a famous impresario to stand in awe before a bouquet that —well, I just wish that I could describe it to you! We never saw anything like it around here before. It’s a mile high and a half mile long and looks like it had all the flowers from the Garden of Eden in it —but all in all, folks, it’s the grandest, most gorgeous bunch of flowers that was ever put together as a love posey. Yes, sir, that’s what it is—a love posey. I can tell by the way she looks at it, and I think I hear her saying something about ‘those blessed kids.’ All I have left to say is, well kids, whoever you are, she is sure tickled to death with your wonderful offering.” There was more but Irene tuned it out on pretext of improving the reception. Her face was contorted with jealous emotion but Tommy did not see it as they had been sitting in the semi-dark. It was the season when, for a few days, certain parts of Long Island were sorely troubled with gnats. The Everett house was none too well screened. It was best not to burn a light in the room where you sat. Tonight there was only the subdued light from the hall to illuminate the living room.

Beryl did not appear to hear. “Someone’s got to come out and help lug in the flowers,” she invited. “They’ve dumped on the kerb.”

“Why didn’t you have the taxi driver bring them in?" her mother asked.

‘Taxi driver?" Beryl repeated. Then she laughed. • “That was Mr Gaylord’s car and his driver,” she said and stuck out her chest in unabashed boastfulness. “Think of that, folks! A limousine! I’ll bet the driver’s sore. He has to go all the way back to New York to-night. But I had to have some way to get the floral pieces out here. Wait untfl you see what the darling gang sent me!” She bounded out ahead of them, and all but Irene followed, fired by her animation and high spirits. Even Tommy went along. Everyone gasped and cried out in admiration of the “bowkay” her gang had sent to Beryl. It was indeed and exceptional offering—a radio made entirely of flowers,

As her friends were carrying it up to the front porch Beryl was besieged by the gang in person. The boys came out of the dark from every direction and swarmed all over her, each striving to be the first of their number to congratulate her. Beryl welcomed them with open arms. When she got to the light again she was much dishevelled and out of breath but happier than she’d been ever before in her life.

So Tommy did not see how Irene felt about her sister’s success. He heard her say something conventionally decent about it, and agreed, although more wholeheartedly, that it was great, never realising that Irene was seething with suppressed envy. With her mother and father sitting in the dining room, and no excuse for it anyway, Irene had not dared to say what she really felt concerning Beryl’s debut. She could not refrain, however, from remarking that of course anyone who appreciated music could not care for Beryl’s singing. If people really wanted that sort of thing it was just lucky for Beryl, that was all. Then the telephone began ringing. People whom Irene had stormed against iqyiting to the house for the occasion (and finally convinced her mother that Beryl might flop and embarrass’ them) were calling up to say how glad they were that she had made a hit. That was more than Irene could endure. She dragged Tommy away for a walk on the beach. He hated to go for some of the nearby neighbours were coming in uninvited and Mrs Everett was getting out marble cake and lemonade.

“Did you come out alone, with just the chauffeur?” Irene asked when Beryl entered the house. “I thought successful people always had a . . .

a coterie.” She stumbled a little on the pronunciation of “coterie” but got it out in the belief that Beryl wouldn’t know the difference anyway. “Whatever that is,” Beryl replied good-naturedly.

f “Well, you might have let Mother know,” Irene declared. “She was worried half to death because you weren’t on the 11.57.”

“I’m sorry,” Beryl said to her mother. “I expected to beat the train here but, I was a little late in getting started.”

Irene also addressed her mother. “Didn’t I tell you?” she said. Beryl sensed the undercurrent of accusation in the words and resented it. “Several people wanted to come with me,” she said coldly “but I . . .” She stopped. After all it was not necessary to tell the neighbours that she had been too sceptical of the reception that awaited her at home to risk bringing strangers into it. “I decided I’d rather come alone,” she added haughtily. “It took a little time to convince them that I was used to going about unescorted.” (To bo continued.)

The neighbours ate the oake and stayed ,on. Someone had suggested that they remain and greet Beryl. Mrs Everett in a flutter of pride and excitement said, ‘Yes, dd," and got out more, cake and lemonade.