“Well, she is,” agreed Julie, “but I can’t help pitying her for all she has missed in not knowing you.”
Hester smiled. “It is wicked of me to spit out at you, Julie dear. You did not make snobs and you have to encounter them just as much as I do. I dare say if we go to Mrs. Lennox’s we shall run up against some, but a party does sound pleasant, doesn’t it?”
“I think, dear,” said Julie with that quiet little matronly air she unconsciously assumed when she was trying to win over her sister, “I think that even though parties are not at all in our line these days, we should go. It is not a party, really, only an informal little musicale. It will freshen us up tremendously to get into a different atmosphere and it will please Mrs. Lennox, who has gone out of her way to be kind.” She looked at her sister entreatingly.
“Julie, you are a saint! Sometimes you talk just like Daddy!”
Julie’s eyes moistened. “I am not a saint,” she protested. “Think what Miss Ware will say when she hears of it?”
Hester’s eyes gleamed. “That settles it—I am going, and if you want to know my honest opinion, I love Mrs. Lennox for asking us.”
There were many orders that week and their working capacity was taxed to its utmost to meet the demand. Had it not been for their systematic arrangement of everything it would have been impossible to accomplish so much. They had learned that the early hours of the morning are the best and got to work by six, continuing on through the day as long as there was anything to do. They had laid down stringent rules for work hours and strenuously endeavored to live by them.
By Thursday they were absorbed in the largest order they had yet received, embracing as it did croquettes, patties and other elaborate things which in an unguarded moment they had agreed to send hot to some club-rooms in the neighborhood. Hester thought they could do this by packing the things in a big steamer they had recently purchased. The steamer was a large tin affair built in sections of trays and would pack to great advantage, besides holding a considerable amount of boiling water at the bottom whereby the things could be kept hot. They had engaged an expressman to deliver this promptly at quarter past eight and it was with anxious hearts and nervous fingers they made the final preparations for packing. The cooking of all these elaborate things had been in itself no light achievement, but even that was as nothing to their fear lest the steamer should not reach its destination safely. They had been at work since five that morning and wrapped and boxed and packed securely was the last thing when the clock struck eight that evening. Five minutes past eight and no expressman! Quarter after, and two excited girls stared at each other across the steamer! Then Hester fled to the basement. The janitor was out but she pounced upon the engineer and got him upstairs before he realized what it was all about. “You’re to go on an errand,” was all she had vouchsafed him, leaving Julie to explain the rest.
The man when he reached their kitchen eyed the big steamer curiously and said he could carry it. Whereupon Julie wanted to fall upon his neck with joy, but showed him the address tied to the cover instead.
“Be’gorra miss,” he said in evident embarrassment, “I ain’t been in the city a week. Not the name of a street am I after knowin’ entirely.”