"The long and short of it is," Larry Strangways summed up, when I had confided to him my fears of being sent about my business as soon as Hugh had left for Boston—"the long and the short of it is that I shall have to look you up another job."
It is almost absurd to point out that the idea was new to me. In going to Mrs. Rossiter I had never thought of starting out on a career of earning a living professionally, as you might say. I clung to the conception of myself as a lady, with all sorts of possibilities in the way of genteel interventions of Providence coming in between me and a lifetime of work. I had always supposed that if I left Mrs. Rossiter I should go back to my uncle and aunt at Halifax. After all, if Hugh was going to marry me, it would be no more than correct that he should do it from under their wing. Larry Strangways's suggestions of another job threw open a vista of places I should fill in the future little short of appalling to a woman instinctively looking for a man to come and support her.
I shelved these considerations, however, to say, as casually as I could: "Why should you do it? Why shouldn't I look out for myself?"
"Because when I've gone to Stacy Grainger it may be right in my line."
"But I'd rather you didn't have me on your mind."
He laughed—uneasily, as it seemed to me. "Perhaps it's too late for that."
It was another of the things I was sorry to hear him say. I could only reply, still on the forced casual note: "But it's not too late for me to look after my own affairs. What I'm chiefly concerned with is that if I have to leave here—to-night, let us say—I sha'n't in the least know where to go."
He was ready for me in the event of this contingency. I suspected that he had already considered it. He had a married sister in New York, a Mrs. Applegate, a woman of philanthropic interests, a director on the board of a Home for Working-Girls. Again I shied at the word. He must have seen that I did, for he went on, with a smile in which I detected a gleam of mockery:
"You are a working-girl, aren't you?"
I answered with the kind of humility I can only describe as spirited, and which was meant to take the wind out of his sails: