"I'm coming whether the rest do or not," Belle remarked emphatically, and Mr. Wentworth gave her a humorous look which completed the conquest of her heart.
"Miss Wetheridge knows that my decision was already made," said Mildred quietly, with an intelligent glance toward her friend; "and if there is any very, very simple work that I can do, I shall feel it a privilege to do the best I can."
She never forgot his responsive look of honest friendliness as he answered, "The simplest work you do in that spirit will be blessed. Miss Wetheridge, I hope you will soon find some more people like Mrs. Jocelyn and her daughters. Good-by now for a short time," and a moment later Mildred saw him talking just as kindly, but differently, to a very shabby-looking man.
Mr. Wentworth was also a "fisher of men," but he fished intelligently, and caught them.
Belle could hardly wait until she was in the street before exclaiming,
"He isn't a bit like our old minister. Why—why—he's a man."
CHAPTER XXII
SKILLED LABOR
Miss Wetheridge's visit bade fair to occasion important changes for the better in Mildred's prospects. From Mrs. Wheaton the young lady had learned of her protegee's long hours of ill-repaid toil. She was eager to gain Mildred's confidence to an extent that would warrant some good advice, and after another call early in the week she induced the girl to come and see her and to open her heart fully in the privacy thus secured. Of course there was one secret jealously guarded, and the reader can well understand that Vinton Arnold's name was not mentioned, and the disagreeable episode of Roger Atwood was not deemed worth speaking of. He was now but a fast-fading memory, for even Belle rarely recalled him.
That the Jocelyns did not belong to the ordinary ranks of the poor, and that Mildred was not a commonplace girl, was apparent to Miss Wetheridge from the first; and it was her design to persuade her friend to abandon the overcrowded and ill-paid divisions of labor for something more in accordance with her cultivation and ability. Mildred soon proved that her education was too general and superficial to admit of teaching except in the primary departments, and as the schools were now in session it might be many months before any opening would occur. With a mingled sigh and laugh she said, "The one thing I know how to do I shall probably never do—I could make a home, and I could be perfectly happy in taking care of it."
"Pardon me!" cried Miss Wetheridge roguishly, "that seems to me your inevitable fate, sooner or later. We are only counselling together how best to fill up the interval. My friend almost made me jealous by the way he talked about you the other evening."