Love for Sale

the crib. Not somebody he’d really known, except maybe in his dreams.
    That night Mary had to face up to herself for real. Which answer did she really want? In a way, she’d been a widow for more than two years already. She was starting not to mind too much. No, that wasn’t quite the truth. She’d started not minding a long time ago.
    She’d learned quite a lot about taking care of herself and her children, one of whom Richard probably didn’t even know existed.
    She’d learned to take care of the bad-tempered old mule and knew how to hitch him up to the wagon. She’d been forced to learn to use tools and fix things around the house when something went wrong. She would take the children with her, Emily in the old pram, Joey on foot, into thewoods and find firewood for the stove. She’d come home pushing the pram and dragging Joey’s little wagon behind with the wood in it.
    She’d written to tell her husband about dear little Emily, but of course she’d addressed the letter to Richard Towerton at Boulder Dam, Arizona. If they had no record of his real name, it would probably have been thrown away.
    She wrote again last summer when her grandfather died and was buried in Maryland. She’d composed it on her way back from taking Grandfather in the buckboard to the Bonus Army March. Richard probably hadn’t received that letter either.
    If he had, surely he’d have somebody read it to him and ask them to write back for him. He’d done that once before when he went up to Sarasota Springs to bury his father and stayed on for a couple of winter weeks to sell the family farm.
    Joey became fidgety and she let him go play with his blocks by the stove. The blocks were another thing she’d improved. When Joey had gotten a little splinter from one of them, she’d sanded them and painted them bright colors.
    She sat staring at the wedding picture. She looked happy and pretty on that day. But not in love. She admired how hard Richard worked and how kind he was to her impossible grandfather. She liked Richard. And she wanted babies. It seemed then to be a good enough reason to marry before she grew older and her grandfather scared off all her beaus. She’d been terrified that she might become a childless spinster.
    She found herself thinking back to the day she buried her grandfather. Jack Summer had collected enough money from strangers who were also fleeing the devastation of the camp on the Anacostia Flats to buy a very cheap coffin and get the tough, crabby old man into the ground.
    But she always tried to put Jack Summer at the back of her mind. When she’d returned and found out that he’d been staying at her house, waiting for her return while he wrote up his articles about the Bonus March, she’d been downright rude to him. She’d never stopped regretting that she’d spoken out without thinking. She should have been far more tactful and not said what she did.
    If, as she suspected strongly, she was a widow...
    She woke the next morning, angry with herself for having a slightly unseemly dream about Jack Summer.

    Chief Walker didn’t need to haul Mrs. Edith White up to the Institute. When she heard about the orphans and the cars, she hotfooted it up to meet Mrs. Taylor the very next day. Dealing first with the automobiles, she purchased the big white-with-red-trim 1931 Peerless for the minister, at the bargain price of five hundred dollars.
    “How nice it will be for him to be able to take a lot of the children out in the country,“ Mrs. White said.
    Mrs. Taylor smiled. She’d never seen a “real“ minister who would be caught dead in such a vehicle. Neither had she ever looked a gift horse in the mouth. She did warn Mrs. White that the Peerless automobile plant was no longer in business and it would be hard to make repairs on it.
    Mrs. White replied confidently that automobiles were all alike inside, so it wouldn’t make any difference. Mrs. Taylor thought she’d done her best and didn’t disabuse Mrs. White of this concept.
    Mrs. Taylor was certain that the minister himself hadn’t been consulted and that the last thing he would want was to haul a bunch of children anywhere in the garish big automobile.
    Next Mrs. White questioned the children. Could they read? Could they prove it? Were they healthy and strong? She looked them over so closely that even their ears were examined to make sure they were both clean and working.
    Miss Perkins, their only teacher now, pointed out that the two