"Oh, Mrs. Bruce, I don't know! I don't know!" and the anxious mother poured out her perplexities in the ear of this other mother, who promptly said:
"Well, if I was you, Martha Chester, I'd put on my hat and go straight down to that post-office an' find out what had become of her. If 'twas Mabel, I should."
"Oh! that's what I've been longing to do! But I thought the real-estate men might come, and I dared not leave. I'm getting so nervous I can't keep still, and as for going on with my packing, it's no use. I must go to see John, this afternoon, too, and——"
"Martha Chester, have you had a bite to eat?" demanded Mrs. Bruce, in an accusing tone.
Martha smiled, and reluctantly answered:
"I don't believe I have. I didn't think, but—course, it's past lunch time."
"Lunch! Hear her, Jane. She's one o' the fashionable women 't cooks her dinner at sundown!" cried the plumber's wife, with an attempt at raillery, but in her mind already deciding that hunger was half the matter with her neighbor's nerves. "Now, look here, the pair of you. Me an' him is more sensibler. We have our dinner at dinner time, and you know that was as nice a vegetable soup we had this noon, Jane Jones, as ever was made, an' you needn't deny it. You just stay here a minute an' Martha'll show you round the house, an' the garden—That garden'll tickle Bill 'most to death, he's that set on posies!—while I skip home and fetch a pail of it. 'Twon't take a minute to do it, an' it can be het up on the gas stove, even if the range fire's out. By that time Dorothy C. 'll have got back: an' me an' Jane'll help her keep house while you step across to Johns Hopkins. I reckon that's good plannin', so you begin while I skip."
The idea of corpulent Mrs. Bruce "skipping" brought a smile to both the listeners' faces, but Martha was already greatly comforted and now realized that she was, indeed, faint from want of food. She had taken but little breakfast, being "too busy to eat," as she explained; but she now set out on a tour of the little house with much pride in it, and in the fact that taken unaware, even, it would be found in spotless order. Her washing was already drying in the sunny garden among the roses and Mrs. Jones's delight over that part of the premises was most flattering.
Indeed, there was a dainty simplicity about the little country-woman which now quite won Mrs. Chester's heart, and after they had examined each of the rooms, and each had found Mrs. Jones more and more enthusiastic, the impulsive housemistress exclaimed:
"Maybe you'll think I'm queer, but I believe the Lord just sent you! That you're the very one will love our home for us while we're away."