The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

don’t wonder you collect stamps,” Fredericka said a little absently. She wished now that he would go and let her get on with her work.
    At this moment, the back door banged and Margie burst into the room.
    “Have you got the Farm mail, Chris?” she asked without so much as a glance at Fredericka. “I’m just going back—”
    Chris handed her the letters with a look of disappointment. It was obvious that he would have liked to have personally delivered the letter addressed to Mrs. Clay. His departure was slow and dignified.
    Margie flopped down into the big chair and thumbed through the letters. Fredericka, who had had more than enough of Margie, started to express her feelings when she was saved by the appearance of an old lady with a book for the lending library. Fredericka went across the hall with her and soon learned that her customer was Mrs. Pike, and that she had made the quilt which Fredericka had won at the bazaar. Fredericka would normally have been interested in this fact and in the long and detailed story of how the pattern had evolved but she had Margie very much on her mind. Should she ask her about last night or leave that to Thane Carey? The girl had seemed so preoccupied and tense.
    Then, in the middle of pink against blue or red against green, Fredericka suddenly remembered that she must ask Margie about the silver box. She made some excuse and the old lady turned rather huffily to the shelves. Fredericka hurried back to the office to find Margie gone, and the desk drawer half-open. She looked inside quickly and was relieved to find the box there, just as she had left it. Perhaps she had, herself, forgotten to shut the drawer properly. She took out the box and, without bothering to make further excuses to her customer, dashed out the back way. She ran all the way to the gate into the alley which she found standing open. But there was no sign of Margie.
    “Plague take her,” Fredericka muttered as she hurried back to the shop and her fretting client.
    For the rest of the day Fredericka was too busy with customers to think of anything else. She ate only a sandwich for lunch and a chocolate milk shake that Chris brought back to her when he took his wheelbarrow to the station to collect freight parcels in the afternoon. He trundled the barrow in by the front gate and around the side path to the back porch where Fredericka stepped out to meet him. The paper carton of milk shake was poised precariously on top of the bundles of books like a lookout on a craggy mountain. Chris handed it to her solemnly.
    “Everyone in this town is talkin’ like they was murder crimated in this place,” he said heavily.
    “Nonsense,” she said a little sharply, and then felt sorry as she took the drink from the large brown hand and looked into the anxious face.
    By night, Fredericka was determined to escape from the bookshop and, though she did not admit it, even to herself, she wanted to see Peter Mohun again. Neither he nor Thane Carey had appeared all day and this fact in itself now seemed, to her overwrought mind, to be full of portent. That afternoon a customer had reminded her that there was to be a lecture at the college at eight-thirty. Something about Korea. She hadn’t had a thought of going to it until, after supper, she found herself changing into her best linen dress. Half an hour later, she shut and locked both doors, and departed, hurrying across the campus as though escaping from demons. When she reached the hall she discovered that she was a little late and slipped quietly into a back seat.
    The large room was crowded with people, but Fredericka could not see any familiar faces near her. She sat back on her hard chair and looked around at the panelled walls and the row of impressive portraits that circled the room. Certainly the college hall was a far pleasanter place than the church one. Fredericka reflected briefly on the rapid decline of American architecture in the fifty or sixty years from the time this hall had been built around 1825 or 1830 to the church hall, a memorial to the worst that 1880 could do. The lecture was given by a correspondent, recently back from the Korean front and he was introduced by Peter Mohun who seemed abstracted and tired, Fredericka thought. She found it difficult to concentrate—a blue bottle fly buzzed around the light above her and the room grew close and hot. At intervals she dozed but, in spite of this, the time dragged until the sudden stir in the