The old lady then said that all this work on the Sabbath was godless and altogether wrong, and that she wouldn’t help in the least. Which Minnie smartly parried by giving her to understand that there was nothing she could do—at her age. Relations were very much strained....
They sat down to supper, weary but profoundly satisfied.
“Well!” said Frances, “I hope he’ll be all right. I hope he’ll be the right sort.”
Minnie shook her head gravely.
“Not likely,” she said, “at eight dollars a week.”
“It isn’t money that gives people distinction,” Frances protested.
“Generally it is,” said Minnie.
Frances departed the next morning with a comfortable feeling that now Minnie wouldn’t be so lonely. Perhaps she had a secret hope like the one Minnie so cunningly dissembled....
A fortnight later she had an enthusiastic letter from Minnie, enclosing a blurred and artistic photograph of herself and the old lady, sitting in the sunset. The polite, the well-informed Mr. Blair had taken it. Then for a long time she heard no more on the subject, and she was too much engrossed in her own affairs to make enquiries about those of anyone else.