“Miss Reubens,—you know, Mother,—is the editor of The Wheel of Fortune, and Mrs. Charlotte Inness runs our book department. They dislike each other cordially and I just know some day there’s going to be a dreadful row——”
“Alice, dearie,—get Mother another tea-cup,” Mrs. Sturgis might interrupt, her eye on her older daughter’s face to show she was attending. “And while you’re up, you might glance in the oven.... Yes, dearie?” she would say encouragingly to Jeannette.
The girl would recommence her story, but she could see it was impossible to arouse their interest. Their attention wandered; they knew none of the people in the office; it was no concern of theirs what happened to them.
“Kratzmer had the effrontery to charge me thirty cents for a can of peaches to-day,” Mrs. Sturgis would remark. “I just told him they were selling for twenty-five on the next block and I wouldn’t pay it, and he said to me I could take my trade anywhere I chose, and I told him that that was no way to conduct his business, and he as much as told me that it was his business and he intended to run it the way he liked! I wouldn’t stand for such impudence, and I just gave him a piece of my mind.” An indignant finger tossing an imaginary ruffle at her throat suggested what had been the little woman’s agitated manner.
“Kratzmer’s awfully obliging,” Alice commented mildly.
“Well, perhaps,—but the idea!”
“Mr. Corey was unusually nice to me to-day,” Jeannette remarked.
Her mother would smile and nod encouragingly, but her eyes would be inspecting her daughters’ plates, considering another helping or whether it was time for dessert.
“I couldn’t match my braid,” Alice would murmur in a disconsolate tone. “I went to the Woman’s Bazaar and to Miss Blake’s and they had nothing like it. I suppose I’ll have to go downtown to Macy’s. Do you remember, Mother, where you got the first piece?”
“No, I don’t, dearie,” her mother would reply slowly. “Perhaps it was O’Neill & Adams.... How much do you need?”