“Come and see what you think. And my name is Miss Nancy Bodkin,” said the milliner, leading the way to the back room.
“Very well, Miss Nancy,” said Marcia. “My name is Miss Marcia Peters. Let’s explore your living arrangements.”
Then she followed into the work room and found that there opened from it a bedroom sufficiently large for two people, and back of it was the combined dining room and kitchen in which Miss Nancy Bodkin had been existing for many years. Looking about her, the fingers of the capable Marcia tingled for order, cleanliness, fresh wall paper and paint, but she sensibly reasoned that these things could come later.
“You know the ropes here,” she said. “Find me a drayman. I’ll go and bring my things and we’ll begin business right away.”
That was how it happened that an hour later Marcia was back in the house in the suburbs with a stout drayman standing at her elbow. There was no possible way in which the drayman could know that Marcia was saying in her soul as she handed him an article, “Soapsuds,” or that she was saying as she discarded a certain piece of furniture or attractive clothing, “Scarlet.” All he realized was that the woman was making a division of the goods before them, and that the greater number and the better part of the things he saw, she was leaving.
When Marcia had satisfied herself, she found a sheet of paper and a pencil and she wrote: “I have bowed my head and passed under the White Flag. I have taken nothing that was purchased with your money, since you are far poorer than I.” There was no beginning to the note and no signature.
When the drayman had carried the last load from the house, Marcia locked the doors on the inside. She propped the note in a conspicuous place on one of the pieces of furniture she was leaving and laid the key beside it. Then going to the kitchen, she raised a window and climbing from it, closed it behind her and followed down the street to the millinery shop.
There was such a fluttering in the breast of Nancy Bodkin that she could scarcely breathe. She was scared to death over what she had done. Why should a woman as attractive as this one, and having as fine clothing, want to live with her and to share her business? She felt that she had been wildly impractical. She should have consulted her minister and her banker and several of her best customers. She should have learned who the woman was and where she came from. And just when she was in a panic of uncertainty and nervous doubts, Marcia returned and lifted the hat from her head. She ran her fingers through her red-gold hair and drew a deep breath.
“Now, then, in about two shakes we’ll get right down to the business of straightening you out,” she said.
Nancy, a lean doubter, the victim of frustrated nature and business unsuccess, heard in golden wonder. Such assurance! So heartening! After all, whose business was this save her own? Why should she start any one to gabbling? Why not dignify herself and her affairs by reticence? Possibly the good God had seen fit to answer in this way the salt-tinctured appeal she had been clammily venturing in frank disbelief that He really would hear or answer when Marcia appeared. What if He were greater than she had thought? What if He had heard and cared? Such strength! Such energy! So capable! Some one to share the long, lonely hours—— Ask questions that might prove disastrous and spoil things when they were none of her real business? She guessed not! What was that about taking the gifts the gods provided? Who cared a whoop concerning the past of the gosling that had developed into the goose that laid the historical egg? It was the egg that really mattered—the egg!