Mrs. Carter had hastily put on her company manners, and sat in state, fanning herself with her still moist handkerchief.
All at once, Mrs. Smith started forward, her eyes glistening, and her shawl floating away from the grasp of her hand.
“Mrs. Carter! Well, I never did——”
“Mrs. Smith! Is this you?”
For the moment, both women were natural. Mrs. Carter forgot herself and her finery in the honest delight of meeting an old friend. Mrs. Smith, a little dazzled and bewildered, came forward with both arms held out, and would have embraced her former crony, but for a sudden consciousness of the silks, and laces, and heavy gold bracelets with which the latter was metamorphosed. This brought the arms slowly down to her side, and left her lips, from which the broad smile was vanishing, half apart.
Mrs. Carter broke into a mellow laugh, and held out both hands.
“So you didn’t more’n half know me, Mrs. Smith? No wonder! Sometimes I don’t know myself. But how do you do? How are the children and Smith? Is he stout and jolly as ever?”
Mrs. Smith remembered that she had been cutting cheese just before she left the grocery, and wiped one hand on the corner of her shawl before she gave it into the clasp of those straw-colored gloves, smiling gingerly, as if she were afraid of hurting them. But Mrs. Carter was herself that day; a breath of secret human sympathy had swept the chaff from her really good heart, and, for the time, her magnificence was forgotten.
“Well, now,” said Mrs. Smith, recovering herself under this hearty treatment. “It’s good for weak eyes to see you again, Mrs. Carter; I went around to the old house, nigh on to a year ago, and inquired about you, but they said you had moved away no one knew where; so I gave you up for a bad job.
“A bad job, ha! Well, I wonder what Carter would say? He don’t think it a bad job, you bet! Just look out there, Smith, and tell me what you think of that?”