The spinster stenographer, disapproving, suspicious, with a comically false smile, put on a pinched little jacket and a hat and jerked out, nodding in duty bound to this odious widow.
“Now!” said Mr. Petersen.
Without too much emphasis, in just the quiet, well-bred way he admired, she told him her little story.
“My husband had a great deal of trouble ... in business, and so on. He was English, and I don’t think he understood our ways very well. So ... when he ... died, there wasn’t anything. Nothing at all. And I have a little girl.... I sold everything I could, and then—somehow—I wanted to come back here—where father was born.... And I remembered all your kindness and I thought perhaps you’d help me—advise me.”
“To the very best of my ability,” he said, soberly.
“I thought of a boarding-house. Would there be a good chance for one here?”
Still the same idea; perhaps it is an obsession with the womanly woman.
Mr. Petersen suggested a thorough discussion of her problem from every side.
“Do you mind, then, if I bring little Sandra in?” Minnie asked. “I didn’t want to bother you——”
“By all means. Where is she? I’ll fetch her.”