The greetings over, the baby was placed by the table in her high chair and given a string of spools and a rubber rabbit to play with, while Mitty, comfortably settling herself in an arm-chair, inquired if June had noticed the stock quotations on her way down. The hired girl, who was setting down the tea tray, listened with open attention for the answer. Both mistress and maid were “plunging” according to their means, and when June confessed that she had passed the bulletins without reading the figures, the two speculators looked at each other in open dismay.
“It’s so long to wait till Barney comes home,” Mitty complained. “I thought of course you’d read them as you passed.”
June was contrite, but could remember nothing.
“And I wanted to know so much! They say that Peruvian’s getting soft. They were saying so this morning anyway. You didn’t even hear anything as you came along? I believe you’re the only woman in Virginia who doesn’t speculate.”
June had not even heard. The knowing volubility of Mitty on the fluctuations of stocks in which she was as well versed as Barney himself, seemed little short of miraculous to the only woman in Virginia who didn’t speculate.
The servant, who had been eagerly listening to the conversation, now broke in.
“I’ll run up and have a squint round, Mrs. Sullivan. Maybe I can pick up more than Miss Allen.”
Mitty tried to be dignified and give the proposition a deliberate consideration. But her consent came with a promptitude it was difficult to suppress. As the woman whisked out through the kitchen door she said in a tone intended to excuse her lack of discipline:
“That girl’s got all her money in Peruvian, and hearing it was ‘soft’ has sort of upset her. Last week she told me she was thirty thousand dollars ahead. She only came to live with us because Barney being one of the big superintendents, she thought she’d get points, and as she’s an A 1 girl I’ve got to humor her.”
They chatted over their tea, Mitty regaling her guest with the gossip of the day, of which she was full. They had been talking some time when the conversation turned on Mercedes and Jerry. It was the first time the subject had come up between them. Mitty knew part at least of her friend’s story, and she had tried to spare her, but she hated Mercedes, who had treated her with scornful indifference, and she hated Jerry because Barney did. She was glad now to give her candid opinion to the woman they had combined to hurt.