We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Cswt tfuA ' tamMamJ
D
36
OWN, Jigger! Stop it, Gadget! . . . Muffet ... can't you make your kittens behave?" I think Muffet understood me — the plaintive tone of my voice — as I stood helplessly trying to balance a coffee tray while the two capering furry kittens played tug-of-war with my slack trousers. At any rate, the old mother cat immediately cuffed her two offspring into obedience.
When I was at last able, to move I took a backward glance at the house. So did Muffet.
It was automatic with both of us . . . a foolish gesture of waiting suspense as if we still expected that beloved masculine form to step out of the French windows — stoop to pet Muffet — take the tray out of my hands — bend his tall head to kiss me lightly — the fragrance of his pipe curling around us —
I gave myself a little reproving shake and started off across the lawn, the old cat pattering after me. I must stop thinking of Bill — listening for him — waiting for him.
Bill was dead. My husband of a year and a half, really and actually my husband to live with and love with only four months, was dead. Killed in the Pacific.
The great, overwhelming grief was gone. It had spent itself in those first weeks of wildness and stupor and unbelief and, finally, of heartbreaking knowledge. No'w there was tranquillity of a kind in me, the kind that comes after you have accepted the awful certainty of death and the added certainty that life must go on for you. I had Bill's cat, Muffet, and her kittens. I had the little white clapboard-and-greystone cottage we had planned together and built before we were married. I had my partnership in the Jan-Jay Hat Shop.
There was always sorrow, of course. And loneliness. But not the emptiness that usually comes with being lonely. Whenever that threatened I remembered Bill's last words to me as we had said goodbye in this favorite corner of the garden.. He had been sitting at this same white-painted barrel that served us as a table; I was on a pillow at his feet, my head in his lap.
"Remember, darling — if anything happens to me, it will be all right because our love is stronger than death.
Many women, like Jan, have found themselves in love with two men at once. But Jan's problem was different, because one of the men was dead
I
ra^-*B^^..i.nttfr