“He brought him into the office the next morning,” Miss Frazier had told Petra. “He actually wanted to adopt the kid himself. He was a most interesting and lovable little fellow really; but what the doctor could have done with him if he had kept him I cannot imagine. He lives in an apartment hotel because he does not want to bother with a housekeeper. Adopting Michael would have meant a housekeeper, of course, and a real home. But that wasn’t what made Doctor Pryne give up the idea in the end. He would have created a home for that child, given up all his freedom to do it, I am sure, if Michael hadn’t been a Catholic. That made Doctor Pryne feel that he ought to have a Catholic upbringing. It would be the child’s best chance, Doctor Pryne was sure, for living down the frightful memories of his grandmother’s slowly developing insanity. Only continuity in the child’s religious life could carry him on over the break which had come so tragically in his family life. Little Michael had adored his old grandmother and she had been everything to him until her reason began to go. Then she had commenced beating him and imagining he had done things he had never thought of doing. It was horrible.
“Doctor Pryne kept Michael a month or more, trying to decide what to do with him. But he was always worried, wondering what he was up to in the hours between school and the end of work here, when they could be together. Then Doctor Pryne remembered his friend, Mrs. Duffield. She’s a Catholic, a widow with seven children, and a close friend of Doctor Pryne’s. She is extraordinarily beautiful-looking and that had something to do with the doctor’s choosing her. No, I mean it. It did! Michael was so sensitive to beauty and he had had so little of it! Doctor Pryne thinks he has genius. I can’t see myself that Michael’s drawings are remarkable but the doctor says they are. Anyway, when he remembered how beautiful she was, and that she was a Catholic, he took Michael right to New York and persuaded Mrs. Duffield to adopt him. She did it—over night, practically. He would be her eighth child and they are all boys, but she was delighted all the same, after she had had him there for an hour. Pretty lucky she has so much money and didn’t have to think about that! Doctor Pryne goes to New York to ‘play’ with them every few months. They all do wonderful things together,—music, riding in the park, even sea trips. When he comes back from New York he looks almost as if he’d had a year’s vacation. He’s devoted to the whole Duffield family, but Michael is the apple of his eye. It’s picturesque, isn’t it!”
Petra had thought about it, her eyes on Miss Frazier’s pale face. The day had been hot even for June and Miss Frazier had been typing for dear life. Petra had heard her machine going madly hour after hour, in here, through the closed door. That might account for the pallor, but Petra thought not.
“It is picturesque,” she agreed thoughtfully. “I hope, for your sake as well as Doctor Pryne’s and Michael’s, that—that it turns out all right. I hadn’t been realizing—hadn’t taken in—how anxious you have been all day. I was thinking only of myself, I guess. I thought it was I, that I was to blame,—that you didn’t really like my being here. I am sorry now I was so blind and—and egotistical. It was Michael all the time that made you so silent!”
Miss Frazier had leaned back in her chair at this point and lifted her eyes to her new assistant’s. Before she looked away from that earnest young face, she knew that she could never resent this girl. It was no longer a case of willing. She said to herself in surprise, “She is kind and strangely gentle. She’s a dear!”
Petra’s thought of Miss Frazier in that meeting of their glances had been as sure and swift as Miss Frazier’s of her. Dick Wilder, when Petra had returned to her party, Saturday night, to have the next dance with him, had said that Doctor Pryne’s secretary was ridiculously starchy and self-important. He had quite frightened Petra of her.—Well, he had been wrong. Miss Frazier was a simply grand person. Her grandness was there in the very curve of her eyelashes and the line of her nose.
Now Miss Frazier was promising: “Yes, when the doctor calls me to-night, I’ll call you. I have a hunch it will be good news, since they got Doctor Stephens onto it so promptly. He’s the last word on infantile paralysis.”
Impulsively Petra came nearer the desk. “Miss Frazier,” she said, “I have a friend I would love you to know. And she you. May I take you to see her some time? She is my best friend. We have been friends for years. She has studied to be a private secretary. I think you will like knowing each other.”
Petra in that moment had no thought of making a friend for herself of Miss Frazier. What had she to offer this clear-cut, high-salaried, dependable person! But Teresa had everything to give her. Teresa and Miss Frazier must know each other. That they would be friends seemed inevitable.
She’s kind and strangely gentle. She’s a dear....