“Oh, I don’t know about that. Miss Peters was about ready, I imagine. It was wearing pretty thin, both ways. I felt she wasn’t for long. You must have too, Mother. But it’s no job for Ariel. It’s too difficult. A job for a strong and experienced woman.” Then he repeated himself lamely—“It’s nonsense.”
“Of course. But Ariel’s wanting a job isn’t nonsense. I’m rather pleased with her for that. And you should be too. But this—this that Grandam has given her—why, it’s work for a husky and sensible woman, as you say. How Grandam thinks Ariel’s going to be of any use to her, I don’t see. Why, Miss Peters gets her up, puts her to bed, runs about with heavy trays, sweeps, dusts, scrubs. Can you visualize Ariel?”
Hugh’s face had grown steadily darker at the picture his mother made so vivid. “It’s ridiculous of Grandam!” he muttered. “And I shan’t let her do this to Ariel. Not a chance! We’ll get hold of just the right person somehow. There must be some one, just the right one. I’ll go to the agent—”
“You are a comfort, Hugh. Always! And we’ll find something for Ariel, something more appropriate, quite easily.” His mother wanted now to make up to Hugh for having been so unpleasant about Ariel the other night.
“Yesterday Joan and I put our heads together over it. So nice having her at home again! We are deliciously congenial, Hugh, in spite of our ages.”
She was not looking at her son, but she was intent on his reaction to this, all the same. She knew from Joan by now that Hugh had been rude to her,—left rather rudely, without saying good night, a party to which she had invited him. And Mrs. Weyman had felt that Joan had cared, in spite of her laughter in the telling. So she had begun to hope that Joan was on the verge of “untangling her complexes” and surrendering to Hugh’s long devotion.
“Well, what did Joan suggest,—about Ariel, I mean? Does she by any chance know about Schwankovsky now? What he’s doing for Ariel?”
“Oh, yes. He told her. After you’d left his house so unceremoniously. She’s quite pleased. But her plan for Ariel has nothing to do with that. The exhibition’s not till May. Ariel has almost two months to get through somehow, you see. Joan says the big department stores pay living wages now. Some of them. One has to have, however, either a college education or some sort of personal pull, to be taken on, Joan says. Imagine, in a department store! But Joan can supply the pull, she’s sure. And even better, Joan thinks she’ll be able to get her into the American Girls’ Club to live. Joan’s one of the committee and a trustee. Only twelve dollars a week for a good room, shared with one or two other girls, and breakfasts and dinners. Lunches they get near their work, I believe.”
Hugh was staring at his mother in a way that seemed odd to her. And now he took his watch up from where it had been lying beside his plate and put it into his pocket with a leisurely finality that seemed to indicate that time had ceased to matter to him and expresses might go their ways unnoticed.
“I didn’t know Joan was so keenly interested in Ariel’s affairs,” he murmured. “But Ariel’s my concern. Nobody else need bother.”