The Parting Glass Read Online Free

simply been too
embarrassed and ashamed to contradict him with the truth.”
    “Hmmm…well,” said Andrew Royal. He looked
somewhat embarrassed himself. He cleared his throat vigorously.
“It’s another way to look at it, but—hem!—don’t you think it’s—not
exactly—”
    Mrs. Meade also cleared her throat, but
delicately. “You mean that the theory of a willing embrace
is—hardly more creditable to either of them, under the
circumstances?”
    Andrew Royal’s face turned a shade redder,
and his expression admitted his answer in the affirmative.
    “I would have always expected it of Clyde to
be scrupulous,” said Mrs. Meade; “I’d hardly have thought he would
choose such an improper time and place for a declaration, if not
for the fact that—”
    “The fact that he’d had a couple,” Royal
filled in, blunt in his turn. “And that is a fact.”
    “And that’s one of the things I don’t
understand,” said Mrs. Meade with another sigh.
    “Well…look at it your way, maybe it does make
sense. Maybe he had a couple of drinks because he was trying to get
up the nerve to say something to her.”
    “It needn’t follow, though, that a careful,
reasoning sort of man like Clyde would choose one of the most
important moments in his life to do something so contrary to his
usual character. Oh, Andrew, this endless speculation isn’t doing
us a bit of good. We’ll never get anywhere if we don’t do something.”
    Sheriff Royal looked somewhat taken aback by
this declaration. He had, it was true, a respect for Mrs. Meade’s
insight that she had well earned, but he had not yet accustomed
himself to the unexpectedness of her thought processes.
    He started to open his mouth in what was
clearly going to be an expression of outrage or a protest, but Mrs.
Meade read his mind, and raised a reassuring hand to forestall him.
“Now, that’s not what I mean, Andrew. You won’t have to do anything
strenuous, and it doesn’t involve Miss Asher. What I meant to say is, we’ll never know anything unless we have some help from
Clyde. May I see him?”
    “Don’t see anything wrong with it,” said
Royal, knitting his bushy brows to think it over. “You could walk
down with me to the jail now, if you don’t mind that. I can’t take
him out to see you, not without having Aunt Asher ambush me, that
is. All right with you?”
    “Certainly,” said Mrs. Meade.
    Sheriff Royal made way for her to pass him on
the boardwalk, and then fell into step beside her as they walked
back down the street.
     
    * * *
     
    Mrs. Meade sat in a chair in the sheriff’s
office, her gloved hands folded over her reticule in her lap, and
observed Clyde Renfrew with grave attention. He was a big young
man, with light hair and a face that was usually serious but still
expressed natural good-nature. Now, though, his entire attitude
spoke dejection; his shoulders slumped dispiritedly and he could
hardly lift his eyes from the floor.
    He had looked somewhat surprised to see Mrs.
Meade when Sheriff Royal brought him out from the back of the jail
into the office, but did not seem able to bring himself to speak
even to ask her why she was there. So Mrs. Meade, who was very good
at reading unspoken questions, broke the silence by answering his
very simply: “I did not want you to think all your friends had
deserted you.”
    Clyde looked up for a second, and then down
at the floor again. “Well,” he said in a lifeless voice, “I
wouldn’t blame them if they did.”
    “Now, that does not seem a very promising
attitude to take,” said Mrs. Meade.
    Clyde said nothing.
    A feeling of pity overmastered whatever else
Mrs. Meade might have been thinking, and she impulsively leaned
forward and laid her hand on his arm. “Clyde, I am not so ready to
dismiss you as you think. I’ve known you a good many years, and I
knew your father and mother. I’ve never thought you would be the
kind of young man to insult a woman, even if you were—were