"Right you are!" cried Bertha Forbes, bringing down her capable-looking hand upon her knee with a businesslike whack. "I'm not envying the woman; not I. Fancy me with a ridiculous feather bobbing over one eye, and diamonds and folderols of all sorts disposed upon my person. Wouldn't I be a holy show?"
"You're really very good looking, when one looks at you carefully, Bertha," said the girl seriously, "but you need handsome clothes to bring out your good points."
"Guess my points good or bad will have to remain in innocuous desuetude then," Miss Forbes said gruffly. "'Nough said about B. F., my dear. And if you're set on staying on in your servile position, and allowing that absurdly pretentious little matron and her infant to walk all over you, I've nothing to say, of course. Do the men treat you properly, child?"
Jane stared at her friend resentfully. "I don't know what you mean," she said. "Mrs. Belknap's husband and brother are both gentlemen, and I—am her servant."
"That's all right, child; but mind you keep that good-looking chap—what's his name? Oh, Everett—yes; mind you keep him at his distance, whatever you do."
"Bertha!" cried Jane.
"You needn't 'Bertha' me," said Miss Forbes severely. "I'm an old maid all right; but I know a thing or two if I am forty, and now that Mr. Towle has gone back to England——"
"Has he gone back?"
"Well; why not? You didn't want him to stay on in America, did you?"
"N-o," faltered Jane, "I-I'm glad he's gone." Nevertheless she felt a more poignant throb of loneliness than usual as she stepped down from the trolley car in the gathering twilight at the close of her "afternoon out." Had it fallen to the lot of the Hon. Wipplinger Towle to present himself at that moment Fortune might have been genuinely kind instead of amusedly scornful in view of his aspirations.