“I do wish Irene could have come,” sighed Mary Louise. “I hated to drive off without her. She looked so sweet and patient sitting there in her chair and waving to me as cheerfully as though she expected to be one of the party. I left her in our garden where she loves to wheel her chair.”
“Who is Irene?” asked Bob Dulaney.
“Oh, Irene MacFarlane is my very best friend,” explained Mary Louise. “She is lame and has to spend all her waking hours in a wheel chair. She gets around remarkably well, but can’t go anywhere unless there is an elevator, as stairs are too much for her. I do wish Josie and Elizabeth could have found a place on the ground floor, just for Irene’s sake.”
“I wish we could have,” said Josie, “especially as Irene is almost a member of our firm. She is to take charge of our needlework department, but we shall have to carry everything to her.”
“If you only had an elevator,” sighed Mary Louise wistfully, the picture of her poor friend still in her mind, sitting so patiently in her chair, her fair smooth brow expressing peace and contentment when she must have felt some chagrin at Fate that she could not join the merry crowd at the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop.
“I forgot something important!” exclaimed Danny suddenly. “Can you put off luncheon just about ten minutes?”
“Why, of course, if you must go,” said Mary Louise. “Laura and Lucile will be here in two minutes,” consulting her tiny wrist watch. “Lucile inherits too much efficiency from her father ever to be a minute late.”
“Just a minute, sweetheart,” Danny whispered. “I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”
“I doubt that,” smiled Mary Louise with a meaning understood by the happy Danny.
“Come on, Bob! You are the person who has to help lift. You come with me, please.”