Invitation to Romance — Sylvia Lloyd

Julie Stewart, with her mahogany colored hair and pansy eyes, was by far the prettiest girl in Harborville. And as teller in the Harborville Merchants Bank, Julie was a favorite among the bank's customers.

Still, it was a surprise to Julie when the bank president, Jared Halliday, told her that his sister, the beautiful Muriel, was inviting Julie for dinner at Glory Acres. Glory Acres, a great expanse of formal gardens and a house of rose brick around an oval fishpond, was a place Julie had seen only from the outside. Now she was to go to dinner there, a member of the select few of Harborville who had been so honored.

From childhood, Julie had striven to better herself and the conditions of her family. It annoyed her that her father, whom she so dearly loved, should remain a shoe-store clerk all his life. She had high hopes for her young sister, Henrietta, and she herself hoped somehow to make life better for her parents.

Now she was being offered a way to accomplish all these things. Muriel Halliday's nephew, Brad Channing, was also a guest at Glory Acres -- and Brad soon made it evident that he considered Julie quite the loveliest girl he had ever seen. It all looked ridiculously easy to Julie -- in one step, her dreams for herself and her family would be realized.

Then Julie's father fell ill, and the flimsiness of the structure on which Julie's dreams had been built was revealed.