"We were speakin' of wages, Miss Joy. And of a certain young lady willin' to do almost anything for money. Will ye come back to the woods with me to help with the housework?"
"Oh, but Martha—it wouldn't do. It isn't as if I'd never known him—but we were such good friends—and it would all be too uncomfortable and embarrassing."
"Ye'd never see him, Miss Joy."
"Never see him!"
"He will look no one in the face but me. The faces that he loved are nightmares to him now—all but old Martha's. No, Miss Joy—ye might, peepin' from behind curtains, set eyes on me Poor Boy, but as for you, he'd not know if you was man or woman, old or young, unless I told him. He has his rules; when the men come in from the village he disappears like a ghost. When they have gone he comes back. There'd be hours for housework, when he'd be out of the way, and that there was a born lady helping old Martha out and kapin' the poor woman company—he'd never know—never at all."
"Hum," said Miss Joy to the bubbles in her glass of champagne.
"The life," said Martha, "will bring back the color to your cheeks, the flesh to your bones, the courage to your heart."
"Am I so dreadfully thin?"
"If I was that thin," said Martha, "I'd hate to have me best friends see me without me clothes. But ye've the makin's of a Vanus, and that's more than ever I had."
Miss Joy laughed aloud.