“My, how interesting!” murmured the little dressmaker, as the visitor descended the steps.
“Good-night—good-night! And thank you again,” bowed Mr. John Smith to the assembled group on the veranda. “And now, young man, I’m at your service,” he smiled, as he joined Benny, still prancing on the sidewalk. “Now he’s what I call a real nice pleasant-spoken gentleman,” avowed Miss Flora, when she thought speech was safe. “I do hope Jane’ll take him.”
“Oh, yes, he’s well enough,” condescended Mrs. Hattie Blaisdell, with a yawn.
“Hattie, why wouldn’t you take him in?” reproached her husband. “Just think how the pay would help! And it wouldn’t be a bit of work, hardly, for you. Certainly it would be a lot easier than the way we are doing.”
The woman frowned impatiently.
“Jim, don’t, please! Do you suppose I got over here on the West Side to open a boarding-house? I guess not—yet!”
“But what shall we do?”
“Oh, we’ll get along somehow. Don’t worry!”
“Perhaps if you’d worry a little more, I wouldn’t worry so much,” sighed the man deeply.
“Well, mercy me, I must be going,” interposed the little dressmaker, springing to her feet with a nervous glance at her brother and his wife. “I’m forgetting it ain’t so near as it used to be. Good-night!”