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Show page 61 "Pardon, mam, x-?ould you be interested in one room?" The woman brightened, "Why yes! Did you hear?" John Henson gave the woman his home address, a thing he x*as to regret the rest of his life. The Henson family consisted of the barber, his wife Viola, and Elizabeth their only child. Elizabeth was eighteen and pretty, but hobbled around in a cast because of a broken foot incurred in a summer sports program after high school graduation. At the time Henson rented their spare room, the slender, suntanned girl was using the semi-confinement imposed by her injury to study a secretarial correspondence course to qualify herself for student work when she entered college on a Physical Education career, possibly the next semester, if her injury permitted. Mrs. Henson, a slight, graying woman of forty two, was diligently interested in gathering enough funds to get Elizabeth's career started, even to renting a room. The strange woman came in a taxi loaded with luggage. She x*as Bessie Hardcastle. She rattled on, before Viola could get a word in, "Oh, I know I'll like it here. So quiet, and look at the trees. I always did like trees, the country in me, I guess." Her husband Ralph knocked on the Henson door at two In the morning, smelling of whiskey and poolroom. Breakfast-time, however, he emerged from the room subdued and friendly, wearing a fresh sports shirt, his hair carefully brushed. He paid a week's rent in advance, bounded down the front steps and headed tint own. |
