Constance gave one look at Mr. Porter, then sank upon one of the little benches within the arch.
“By George, she’s right and I’m a blockhead! Think I’d better turn over my job to her and go down into the engine-room until I learn to read human nature as she can. Yes, it is the finest, highest-priced arch in the building, but it didn’t take that old black woman five seconds to discover the match for it.”
“But, Mr. Porter,” protested Constance, “of all the extravagant steps, and for Mammy, above all others, to urge it. That conservative creature! And the way she expressed it! Why was I born a Blairsdale? It will shorten my years, I know, to have to live up to the name,” and Constance broke into a merry laugh.
“Perhaps the burden will be lifted before long, and such a calamity to your friends averted,” answered Mr. Porter, soberly, but with twinkling eyes. The one o’clock whistle had just blown in a building hard by, and the Arcade’s elevator was beginning to bring down the people from the floors above. Among them was Hadyn Stuyvesant, who went at once to the luncheon counter, quite unaware of the presence of a certain little lady near the entrance of the Arcade; but her back was toward the elevator. For one second she glanced at Mr. Porter entirely innocent of the purport of his words. Then, catching sight of the mischievous eyes twinkling at her, she rose suddenly to her feet, saying: “Come at once and let me learn what this rash step will cost me.”
With a low laugh Mr. Porter strode toward his office beside a very rosy-cheeked young girl.
[CHAPTER VIII—Vaulting Ambitions.]
In the course of a few days Constance’s new quarters in the Arcade were in operation, for Mr. Porter lost no time in fitting up Arch Number One. The little booth beneath the stairs was dismantled to furnish forth the new one. Down at the kitchen Mary and her sister Fanny, who had come to assist in the work, were doing their best to keep abreast of the orders pouring in with each mail, while Mrs. Carruth, her ambitions at length achieved, was attending to the correspondence, since Constance’s time must for a little while be given to the new booth. She had not received a reply to her letter to Kitty Sniffins, and for the time being was too occupied with the demands of the new booth to take further steps in the matter. Indeed, she had about made up her mind to look for someone else, once order was brought out of the confusion of moving and settling, for some indefinable instinct caused her to feel an aversion to engaging Kitty Sniffins. Had she been asked to state why, she would have found it difficult to put her objection into actual words, and more than once she reproached herself for entertaining it at all. Nevertheless, she could not free herself from it, but was too busy just then to dwell upon it. In the course of a few days everything would be settled and in running order; and meanwhile she, herself, would go to the Arcade each day where, with Charles as her Majordomo, body-guard and faithful friend, she was a veritable queen of her little realm, and woe betide the individual so reckless as to forget that he or she was in the presence of a Blairsdale.
The pretty Arch had been in perfect running order for one week when Constance began to cast about for someone to take her place, since neither she herself, nor her family felt content to have her make the journey to and from South Riveredge each day, or to spend her time at the Arch. On the previous Saturday she had put a carefully-worded advertisement in the Riveredge Times, the answers to be sent to Arch No. 1, Arcade Building; and upon her arrival at her Arch on this Monday morning she found dozens of letters from girls, and even men, asking employment. She was reading one of the letters when a shadow fell across the page, and raising her eyes she saw a young man standing at the counter. Thinking he had come to purchase a box of candy, she rose from her chair and stood waiting for him to make his wants known to her. Instead of doing so, he raised his hat, and with a most impressive bend of his long, loosely-hung figure, and a smile which irritated her by its self-complacency, said:
“How are you, Miss Carruth? You’re sure putting up a big show here, ain’t you?”
“What can I do for you?” asked Constance, with quiet dignity.