Jessie listened with round eyes and exclamations barely suppressed. "It's the very thing," she could have cried, remembering the Miss Coxens, and their laments over the difficulty of obtaining any efficient help. Jessie restrained the first impulse to tell Millie her thought. It would be better to see the Miss Coxens first, and to lay the matter before them.
"I should think you might easily get dresses to make," she remarked judiciously. "We have not many dressmakers here, you know. And if you can, then you will make Old Maxham your real home! And now I've got to go out for something, and you must rest, because you look quite tired with so much talking."
Impulsive Jessie was half-way down the street, before a recollection surged up of the last time she had seen Miss Sophy Coxen. With the remembrance came an unpleasantly hot blush. But Miss Sophy Coxen had to be encountered some time; and the present hour was as good as any other. So Jessie hurried on.
"Dear me! Why, it actually is Jessie Perkins at last!" declared Miss Coxen, peeping out of the window. "I began to wonder if she ever meant to come near us again."
"And what a colour she has, to be sure!" chimed in Miss Sophy. "She hadn't that when I saw her over the way—you know, sister! She was as pasty as a tallow candle, and as shaky as anything."
"I wouldn't say one word to Jessie about that, Sophy, if I was you. Girls don't like to have it thought that they care for anybody in particular, you know; and I dare say it would vex her to know that we think what we do think."
"Ah, well, we know what we know, and nothing can undo that," sighed Miss Sophy oracularly. "But mum's the word, sister."
Miss Sophy spoke the word in happy oblivion of the fact that she had already told her story to at least fifteen individuals belonging to Old Maxham.
"Well, Jessie, how d'you do? Come in, my dear," Miss Coxen said with great cordiality, and both sisters squeezed Jessie's hands in affectionate style.
Jessie, still wearing a high colour, seated herself promptly with her back to the window, and proceeded to pour forth particulars of Mildred and of Mildred's prospects. This was a disappointment to the pair, for they wanted her to talk about Jack, not about Mildred, and Jessie refused to be turned aside from her subject.