Something in the grave, kindly tone of her question stung Mrs. Champney into a sort of bitterness.
“Yes,” she answered. “All of them are married. I’m a mother-in-law, Emily.”
Miss Lyons did not smile. She was silent for a time, looking down at her polished desk as if she were consulting a crystal. Then she looked up.
“We happen to need somebody in the Needlecraft Shop,” she said. “I could give you that, Jessica, at eighteen dollars a week; but—”
“But what?” asked Mrs. Champney, after waiting a minute.
“I’m afraid you haven’t had much experience,” said Miss Lyons.
“I’ve done a good deal of parish work,” said Mrs. Champney anxiously.
She had known love, and happiness with the man she loved. She had endured the anguish of losing him. She had borne three children and brought them up. She had traveled a little in the world. She had even known a “financial disaster” at fifty; but in the presence of Emily Lyons she was ready to admit that she had had no experience—that her sole qualification for any useful occupation was the parish work she had done.
“If you’d like to try it, then,” said Emily gently. “I’ve found, though, that women who have led a sheltered domestic life are inclined to be a little oversensitive when it comes to business.”
Mrs. Champney, into whose sheltered domestic life had come only such incidents as birth and death and illness and accident and so on, said that she hoped she wasn’t silly.