Strange though it was, her present situation seemed natural. That she should find herself in the home of the Cabots who, from among the great cityfull had figured in both her previous engagements, impressed her as nothing short of fatalistic. Blindfolded, she had faced in their direction. Each of her stumbles had been a step toward the place made ready for her. She had been prepared to appreciate what they had to offer her; they what she could and would return. The third attempt to earn her livelihood surely would prove the charm. Could it be possible that only that morning she had set out, the end of her day a closed book? This afternoon the book lay wide, its lines clearly typed. And pleasant reading the future chapters looked, each day-page illumined with the joy of doing for someone less fortunate than herself.
Until he spoke, she did not know that Jack was staring at her from the bedroom doorway.
“You have a nicer nose than the last one. She left because I called her ‘Needle-nose Nannie’ to her face. She had the piercingest nose I ever saw. I never asked my other governesses, but will you come with me on my drive?”
Dolores was glad to go, the more so that he had suggested it. Already she longed that he should love her. There seemed safety in the love of a child.
In the open car from which he preferred to take his air when the weather was fine, as he told her with his manner of a bored little man of affairs, she scarcely could restrain the impulse to put her arm around him. Appreciating, however, his oldishness, she contented herself with finding his hand beneath the fur robe when a squirrel excited them by dashing across the road in peril of their tires.
They did not drive for long. Sight of several children running races on the green brought from the cripple a crisp order of “Home, Herrick!”
Dolores made no protest. She understood. But she held tight to the gloved fingers beneath the robe.
“I never take any chances of missing John,” was the boy’s manufactured explanation. “He comes up to see me first thing after he gets home.”
Back in his suite, the tedium of his shut-in life soon showed in returning irritability.
“I do get so tired of women, women—always women! I don’t like them any more than they like me. Why can’t they get me a man governess?” And after a scowling moment: “What games do you know?”