I
MRS. THORSTAD went back to Mohawk a few days later, leaving behind her a trail of increased prestige and carrying with her many assurances of appreciation which she could cogitate at her leisure. Her husband met her at the station, quietly, graciously pleased as he always was at a home-coming.
“So Freda stayed for a while,” he said, as they went down the street his arm hanging heavy with her suit-case.
“Yes. It will be nice for her. Pleasant young girls, Mrs. Brownley’s girls, although they haven’t a great deal of mentality. Freda attracted quite a little attention. Miss Duffield is very anxious for her to stay in St. Pierre but of course Miss Duffield is an outsider and cannot exert any influence. Mrs. Flandon had some very sensible suggestions. They were going to see if there was a chance for Freda to get a place as secretary to the general Republican district committee and later do some work for the campaign committee. She can’t typewrite and that’s a drawback but they thought they might get around that. She’ll know in a day or so. It needs the consent of the chairman and he’s out of the city. But he’ll probably do just what Mrs. Flandon asks.”
“In the meantime Freda stays at Mrs. Brownley’s?”
“Yes, and if she stays for a definite work, Mrs. Flandon will find her a place to live.”
“The Flandons are nice people?”
“Oh, yes, a worldly sort, but very good. Mrs. Flandon is to be made delegate at large from the state if they can manage it.”
“That’s good stuff.”
“She’s hardly the person for it,” said Mrs. Thorstad. “As a matter of fact I am convinced that if this visiting organizer, Miss Duffield, who after all is in a most anomalous position, had not urged it (she is an intimate friend of Mrs. Flandon’s)—well, if she had not interfered I might have been made the delegate at large myself. As it is, I’ll have to try to get the Federated clubs to send me. I ought to be there. It’s important for the future. I should have been the candidate for delegate at large.”
Her husband whistled and shifted the bag to his other arm.
“I’m very glad you were saved that grave responsibility, Addie,” he said, with his unfailing tact.
“Yes—there is that side, of course. But this Miss Duffield is a person who’ll bear watching. I never can see the point in sending these unsettled young women about the country organizing. They’re dangerous in some ways. Now I happen to know that Miss Duffield is the sort of young woman who receives men in her rooms—it’s only one room and there’s a bed in it even if it has a cretonne cover—”
“Addie—Addie—!”
“But that’s not all. At the same time she does receive men in her room—of course it may be all right and just a modern way—but she also gets passionate, very suspicious letters from other men.”
Mr. Thorstad frowned. But they reached the house just then and in the business of entering and commenting on his housekeeping Mrs. Thorstad let the matter drop. She flew about efficiently and her husband sat back in his armchair and watched her. There was no doubt of his gladness at her return. His pleasant gray eyes were contented, a little sad perhaps, but contented.
“Freda isn’t involved with any young men?” he asked.
“No—they tease her about young Smillie—that’s H. T. Smillie, First National Bank, you know, but she says that’s just nonsense.”