Radio Mirror: The Magazine of Radio Romances (Jan-June 1945)

22 dolls and toys, and I told her about the doll clothes I had made and how Mother had taught me to sew. It would have been better if she hadn't said, "Why don't you stop into the shop and see me some day next week, Miss Drake? We make a specialty of hand-made doll clothes, and Miss Tashly, who's been with us for years, is leaving to get married. It leaves us in a terrible spot, what w^ith Christmas coming on, and so-r-" Yes, if Mrs. Sheldon hadn't come into Harpers' I probably would never have thought of applying at her shop for a job, and I would never have been plunged back into fairyland. For that was what working for the Sheldons meant to me. It meant a salary large enough so that I could afford to move from the Girls' Club to an apartment of my own — a tiny, one-room affair on a run-down street, but my own, to fix up as I chose. It meant working in a place where the wealthy came and went, in pleasant surroundings, with rich and wonderful fabrics. And it meant Howard. WTITH Howard Simms came all the things I had missed " during the past year — missed for too long, I thought then, but not for long enough to be good for me, really. Little attentions — flowers, candy, frequent telephone calls, dancing, admiration and flattery lavished on me once again. Howard came into the shop one afternoon and saw me — it was as simple as that. The Sheldons told me later that he'd refused to leave until they'd introduced him to me. And when I left the shop at closing time, he was waiting for me — as, somehow, I'd known he wovdd be. "I waited for you," was all he said, but into that I read, I've waited for you all my life, and I was off again into fairyland, this time complete with romance. I may have been a foolish, empty-headed sort of girl, in those days, but I did have sense enough for this: I knew, as the work-filled days and the gay evenings drifted by, that I didn't love Howard, and never would. If only I'd had the added sense to let him go! He was in love with me; I knew that almost from the start. And when he asked me to marry him, as I was sure he would, I couldn't bring myself to say no. I suppose a girl who has never had "no" said to her finds it hard to say the word herself. No is so final, such a cutting-off sound. "Maybe" is better, and "perhaps," and "I can't be sure. . ." And a no to Howard would have meant an end to the pleasure I had in his company, the pleasure I took from having him always at my beck and call, ready to take me wherever I wanted to be taken. And so when Howard said, his eyes searching mine almost wistfully in hope, "Shelley — I love you. You know that. I want you to marry me — I want to take care of you for the rest of my life!" I said neither yes nor no, but temporized instead. "We're both young, Howard. We've got lots of time ahead of us," I told him. "We're having fun together. Why can't we go on like this for a while? I'm not ready to make up my mind quite yet." And that, or a variation of it, was what I told him for over a year, each time he recovered enough from the last rebuff to find courage to ask me again. "Let's wait a while . . . I'm not ready . . . Can't we let things go on as they are?" Always, I kept the door of his hopes ajar— both for his sake and for mine. I might have said yes to him, I suppose, if I hadn't kept, hidden but ever-green, a dream in the back of my heart. Every woman's dream, of course — the hope that somewhere the right man is waiting for her. Now and again a little sliver of fear would pierce that hope which is at the core of every woman's being — what if I never fell in love? What if the man I dreamed about never came along? It was reassuring, then, to know that there would always be Howard, that I could marry him whenever I chose. I didn't stop to consider how cruel that might be to him-, either way — if the man in my dreams came along, or if he did not. But as I might have known he would, even Howard became insistent at last. He came one night, his arms full of flowers, when I was recovering from an attack of flu. He found a vase for the flowers, put them on the desk, and came straight across the room to sit on the edge of the couch beside me. "Shelley — Shelley, I've got to know. Honey, I don't want you working any more. You weren't meant to earn your own living. Won't you give me a chance to take care of you — to move you out of this little place, and give you everything you Want? Shelley — it would be so easy for you to say yes. Please set a date for our wedding. We've been engaged for more than a year — you can't keep any man waiting forever, darling." A little nagging fear — the fear of losing Howard — rose in my mind. Say yes, it told me. Say yes, or you may lose him. But, Say no, my heart told me. Say no, because you really don't love him. Keep waiting, just a bit longer. ; ****/ *9