"You tell Sunshine Bright that the next time I go by the notions I'll stop and break her neck. See?"
Hattie Belweather, having sped away to carry this challenge, Gladys found herself confronted by Miss Flossie Grimm, a saleslady in the stockings, to which department Gladys herself in a minor capacity was also attached. Feeling that the Follett child was ignorant of facts of which she should be in possession, Miss Grimm said, reprovingly:
"You've got a chunk of gall! Look at that!"
That was one of the papers giving the story of Teddy's downfall, so that Gladys, too, was soon making her way homeward. But she was not a cash girl for nothing, while the instincts of the city gamine endowed her with alertness of mind beyond either of her sisters. She remembered that the paper she had seen was a morning one, and that by this hour those of the afternoon would be on the news stands. They would not only give further details, but might possibly tell her that the whole story was untrue. Somewhere she had heard that among the New York evening papers one was renowned for solemnity and exactitude. Veracity costing a cent more than she usually spent for the evening news, when she spent anything, which was rare, she felt the occasion worth the extravagance.
In these pages, Teddy's case was condensed into so small a paragraph that she had difficulty in finding it; but during the search she lighted on something else. It was something so extraordinary, so unbelievable, so impossible to assimilate, as to thrust even Teddy's situation well into the second place.
After that, all the known methods of locomotion were slow to Gladys in her efforts to reach home; but before she could enter the house she had seen Jennie advancing up the avenue, and so ran back to meet her.
"Oh, Jen! Look!"
It was all she had breath to say, so that Jennie naturally did as she was bidden. But she, too, found the paragraph thrust beneath her eyes extraordinary, unbelievable, and impossible to assimilate, though for other reasons than those that swayed her sister.
Collingham-Follett. On May 11th, at St. Titus's Rectory, Madison Avenue, by the Rev. Larned Goodbody, Robert Bradley Collingham, Jr., of Marillo Park, N. Y., to Jane Scarborough Follett, of Pemberton Heights, N. J.
Of the many things Jennie didn't comprehend, she comprehended this paragraph least of all. Who had put it in the paper, and what did it mean? She walked on dreamily, Gladys trotting beside her, a living interrogation point.