"Be quiet, Buddy, an' let me tell," interrupted Doris. "She did find him! Course she found him, an'—an' her horrid ol' clo'es was changed to a lovely wedding dress, an'—an'—that's the end of it!"
Miss Tripp laughed. She felt unreasonably cheered by this optimistic finale to her sad little story—which had no ending.
"That would be the beginning of a very cheerful story," she said. "Now Aunty Evelyn must get some breakfast and start out into the cold world."
"Oh! we want you to stay!"
"I'm coming back, dears; yes, indeed; I'll be back this very evening, and then I'll tell you the loveliest story in the world, all about a little goose-girl."
It was a very cold world indeed into which Miss Tripp fared forth that winter morning. But Elizabeth's friendly protests were vain.
"I really must go, dear," Evelyn told her with a firmness quite foreign to her fashionable self. "You don't know—you can't guess how necessary it is for me to find some way of earning money. Mother——" her voice shook a little—"isn't at all well; she never was very strong, and our losses have quite—Why, Elizabeth, you would hardly know mother; she's so changed. She just sits by the window, and—looks out; I can't seem to rouse her to—to do anything."
Remembering the frail, artificial old lady, with her elaborate toilets and her perpetual aura of rice-powder and sachet, Elizabeth thought this exceedingly probable. "Was it so very bad, Evelyn?" she asked hesitatingly. "You know you only told me——"
"We lost nearly everything when the Back-Bay Security Company failed last fall," said Evelyn quietly. "I—couldn't seem to believe it at first. Of course we were never rich; but we had always lived very comfortably—you know how pleasant it was in our little apartment, Elizabeth, with our good Marie to do everything for us, and all our friends."
Miss Tripp touched her eyelids delicately with her little lace-edged handkerchief. "I—mustn't cry," she said. "It makes one look so like a fright, and I——. Elizabeth, do you suppose I could get a place to—teach? I do love children so, and they always seem to like me."