Read Online The Girl Next Door (Crimson Romance) by Peggy Gaddis - Free Book Online Page A

cane.
    “So?” he said at last. “You mean if you love someone very deeply, with all your heart, that someone will, given time, learn to love you?”
    Betsy’s eyes were shining. But above the tumult in her heart she said with forced gaiety:
    “But of course. Any dope knows
that!”
    Peter turned his head, as though looking down at her, and suddenly he grinned. “You’re very convincing, pet,” he told her. “But it seems to me I’ve heard differently.”
    Betsy laughed, shakily. “Oh, well, you believe what you believe, and I’ll believe what I believe, and we can still be friends — being the broad-minded type!” she answered.
    Peter laughed, and when Betsy let him out at his house a little later, she could tell by the way he smiled that he was happier than he had been when they set out.

Chapter Eight
    That evening after dinner, when George had left for his weekly lodge meeting, Edith and Betsy were alone in the living room. There was a far-away look in Betsy’s eyes, and Edith waited for some clue to her daughter’s secret thoughts. But when Betsy was ready to confide, she would — and not a moment before.
    “Mum,” she said presently, and Edith’s heart warmed at the old childhood term, “do you think it’s true that if you love somebody — well, pretty terribly — that somebody sort of
has
to love you in return?”
    Edith’s eyes widened and then she dropped them to her sewing.
    “Well, in a way, I suppose it’s true,” she admitted. “It’s natural enough. If you love a person, you naturally show him your best and most attractive self. You work at the job of winning his love. And I suppose if you work at anything long enough and hard enough, you get what you’re after.”
    Betsy was watching her, listening intently, and there was something in her golden-brown eyes that stabbed at her mother’s heart
    “It’s Peter, I suppose?” Edith asked, impulsively.
    Betsy’s eyebrows went up a little and she seemed to retreat But she answered promptly, “Of course. Who else? It’s always been Pete and it always will be!”
    “But darling, Pete’s
blind.
Surely, you must realize — ” Edith stopped, halted by the look on her daughter’s face.
    “And that only makes me love him all the more. Because I can help him and take care of him — and do things for him,” Betsy said quietly.
    “I know, darling — but Pete’s not in love with you.” Edith’s voice shook a little.
    “I know that, Mother.” Betsy’s face seemed drained of all color. “He’s not in love with me
now.
But if I work very hard, and do everything I can to make him realize I’m all grown up and everything — ”
    Edith waited, not daring to speak, lest she say the wrong thing. This business of being a parent was complicated, she told herself. It was hard to stand aside and watch the daughter you adored rush headlong into a furnace. But if the child wouldn’t let you help …
    “Do you suppose if I let somebody give me a terrific rush and get myself engaged, that would make Pete realize I’m grown up?” suggested Betsy. “I mean, if I were engaged to somebody else, then he’d know I’m old enough to be married.”
    “Betsy Drummond! Are you out of your mind?” raged Edith. “Of all the shameless — ”
    “Bo Norris wouldn’t mind being engaged to me,” Betsy said coolly.
    “Any man would mind being used in such a shameless, cruel way.” Edith was appalled at the revelation of Betsy’s deviousness. “Why, poor Bo has been mad about you for years. He’d all but lose his mind if he thought you’d give him a kind word, let alone promise to marry him.”
    “Then why shouldn’t I let him have a little fun? At least, if Pete thought I was going to marry Bo, he might decide he didn’t want to lose me himself.’’
    Edith was aghast. “Betsy, I honestly believe you mean that,” she whispered.
    Betsy’s head went up. “There’s very little I wouldn’t do to get Pete,” she acknowledged.
    Edith