day when you’d be feeling blue. But I just couldn’t wait any longer.”
Henrietta flushed with pleasure. “I’m so glad to know that! If he’ll just keep on being satisfied a few months longer, we’ll have this place paid for!”
“Oh, we’re going to pull through all right!” Isabella exclaimed, hopeful conviction in her tones and smile. Then she puckered her brows and did her best to look doubtful and alarmed as she went on in a tragic half whisper, her blue eyes dancing: “If he doesn’t turn pirate and sail away in the meantime, or, maybe, make a villain out of you, with this wicked influence you’re getting alarmed about, so that you’ll maybe steal your own salary and run away with it and leave mother and me to star-r-ve! To think that a famous architect should be just oozing badness all around him like that – as Mark Twain said, ‘like ottar of roses out of an otter’ – at the same time that he’s evolving such beautiful things out of his brain! Ugh! It’s awful!”
Henrietta laughed, a short, chuckling laugh that suggested deeper amusement than it expressed. “Is there anything you wouldn’t make fun of, Bella? Very likely it isn’t he, after all, but just my own innate wickedness coming to the surface. It’s only that I feel a great desire to amuse myself, and am more willing to be selfish about it than I used to be. Three months ago I wouldn’t have gone to this theatre party, with mother ill and you alone with her. I know I’m a beast to do it, but I do want to go dreadfully, and – ”
“And you’re going, and you’re not to coddle your conscience any more about it. It’s all right, and we’re all right, and mother and I would feel we were two beasts if you stayed away on our account. What makes you think Mr. Brand responsible for this awful depravity? Because he invited you to his house-warming?”
“Oh, no! It was thoughtful and lovely of him to include poor little me among his guests, and I’m as grateful as – Cinderella. But he sometimes says some little thing, in connection with what we are doing, about the pleasure there is in beautiful things and how it and the joy one ought to get out of life enlarge and deepen one’s existence. And then I begin to feel, away down inside of me, a longing for pleasure, and as if I could reach out and grasp all sorts of – of things, just for my own enjoyment.”
“And that makes you feel dreadfully wicked!” Isabella’s laugh tinkled through the room, a lighter, merrier sound than her sister’s. “Dear me! As if we didn’t all feel that way once in a while!”
“You never do,” Henrietta interrupted.
“Don’t inquire too deeply into my feelings, unless you want to be shocked. Suppose we have some hot toast to cheer us up after this awful confession. Delia,” to the maid who entered in response to her ring, “have you some fresh toast ready?”
“The toast is awfully good this morning, Delia,” said Henrietta smiling at her. “It’s always nice, but it’s particularly good, exactly right, this morning.”
“Thank you, Harry!” said Isabella as the maid disappeared. “I’m so glad you said it. Maybe it will make her feel better. Did you see that determined, dare-and-die look on her face? I’m sure something’s going to happen!”
“And we’ve raised her wages twice already,” the other exclaimed, as her face took on the same anxious expression that had just clouded her sister’s.
“Yes, and we can’t pay her any more than we’re giving her now. She isn’t worth it and we couldn’t afford it if she were.”
“Just as we’ve begun to feel sure she was satisfied and would stay. Oh, Bella! It’s too bad! But maybe it’s no worse than it was the last time we got scared, when her cousin was married and she wanted a day off. You remember, she had two days of the introspective mood then.”
“Thank you, Delia! It’s done to a turn!” and Isabella smiled sweetly at the returning maid, who retreated a step and stood still, fumbling her tray, an embarrassed, determined look upon her face.
“It’s perfectly lovely,” chimed in Henrietta with enthusiasm.
The girl shuffled from one foot to the other but her expression did not relax. Isabella cast an “I-told-you-so” look at her sister and glanced expectantly at the maid.
“What is it, Delia?”
“I’m thinkin’, Miss Marne, you’d better be lookin’ for a new girl.”
“Why, what’s the matter? You don’t want to leave us, do you?”
“No, miss, I don’t want to, an’ that’s the truth. But I don’t think I’ll be stayin’ any longer than you can get another girl.”
“What’s the trouble, Delia?”
“It’s lonesomeness, Miss Marne. It’s that respectable out here that there’s niver a policeman comes along this street for days at a time. An’ the milkman comes around that early I niver see him, an’ anyway he’s elderly an’ the father of four. An’ it’s so high-toned, there ain’t a livery stable anywhere, an’ so there’s none of them boys to pass a word with once in a while. An’ there’s only the postman, an’ him small and married.”
There was silence for a moment while the maid shuffled her feet and turned her tray about and the sisters bit their lips. Then Isabella exclaimed, in a tone of brisk sympathy:
“Yes, Delia, I understand how you feel, and I don’t blame you at all, but – ”
“Don’t make up your mind right away, Delia,” Henrietta broke in. “Think about it a little longer. Maybe something will happen.”
“And only think, Harry,” Isabella groaned, as Delia left the room, “what a wonderful bargain that real estate agent made us think we were getting, just because there were so many restrictions there could never be anything or anybody objectionable within a mile of us!”
“I had an inspiration just in the nick of time,” Henrietta replied. “Mrs. Fenlow told me, when she was in the office the other day, waiting for Mr. Brand, that she is going to move her garage to this end of her property, which you know is just a block away, with an entrance from this street – she hoped it wouldn’t annoy us – and she said she was going to have a new chauffeur. And we can hope, Bella, that he’ll be young and tall and handsome and inclined to be flirtatious with good-looking maids who sometimes work in front door-yards nearby. Why, here’s Billikins! You naughty doggie, where have you been?”
A white fox terrier had bounded into the room and was giving her exuberant greeting, having stopped first to drop at her feet a rag-doll that he carried in his mouth. “There, that will do,” she laughed as he sprang to her lap, and thence to her shoulder and testified his overflowing affection with voice and tongue. “Get down now and take care of your babykins!”
“I must go now,” she declared, and, rising, began putting on hat and coat. “I’ll just run upstairs and kiss mother good-bye again. If anything should happen, Bella, or should you want me to come home for any reason, you can ’phone me at the office until five o’clock, and after that at Dr. Annister’s. Mrs. Annister, you know, is going to chaperon Mildred and me. Wasn’t it sweet of her to ask me to stay all night with them!”
Five minutes later she came hurrying downstairs again, and Isabella, waiting for her at the front door, put the suitcase into her hand, pressed an arm about her waist, and gave her a farewell greeting.
“Have just as good a time as you can, Harry, dear,” she said gaily, “so you’ll have all
