Three Bright Pebbles

by Zenith Brown

  “Cheryl . . . ?”

  “Would I let her go barging off by herself?” Mrs. Jellyby asked curtly. “Cheryl!”

  And in the little door that led to Mrs. Jellyby’s bedroom I saw the girl with the golden hair and the eyes like faded hyacinths.

  Dan looked at her for a long time, and neither of them spoke. Then his face broke into his old irresistible grin.

  “And you can both of you get to work,” Mrs. Jellyby said. “And no nonsense. Bring those strings, Grace. I need somebody tall to help with the trumpet vine.”

  In the garden she took the red string, and handed me a tin measure full of bright yellow corn.

  “You go and feed the peacocks—the trumpet vines are all done.”

  Mrs. Jellyby smiled.

  “She’s the kind of mistress I’ve always wanted for Romney,” she said.

  I couldn’t make the sort of noise she made to call the peacocks, but as the first grain of corn hit the ground they started for me. And behind them—and not entirely out of place, I thought—came Mr. Dunthorne.

  “You know, I’ve got to thank you,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “I’ve decided to marry Natalie.”

  “That’s grand,” I said.

  “I never could make up my mind,” he went on, “until you told me about that business of the insurance.”

  “Really?”

  “A girl’s got something who’d do that and never talk about it.”

  “Natalie’s got plenty,” I said.

  He burrowed around inside his bright plaid jacket, and fished out a leather billfold. “And here’s this,” he said.

  He held his hand out, and I held out mine, and saw in it two five hundred dollar bills.

  “What’s that?” I inquired. “The marriage broker’s fee?”

  “No,” he said. “But you bet they’d hang the guy, and I bet they wouldn’t. Just a sporting proposition, and I always like to pay up on the line.”

  I’ve never, I may say, been quite sure about that bet . . . and I don’t really know what I’ll do when Cheryl pays me back.—I do know, however, that I never see a bright pebble out of a roadside sign that my heart doesn’t miss a beat.