“No. Read this!” She handed the other girl a clipping from the advertising columns of a newspaper.
“I saw it just by accident, Saturday, after I left you. Papa had left his paper in the coupé. I was going up to my First Aid to the Injured Class—it’s at four o’clock now, you know. I made up my mind right off—it came to me like an inspiration. I just waited until it came to the place where they showed how to tie up arteries, and then I slipped out. Lots of the girls slip out in the horrid parts, you know. And then, instead of waiting in the ante-room, I put on my wrap, and pulled the hood over my head and ran off to the Midlothian—it’s just around the corner, you know. And I saw his wife.”
“What was she like?” queried Esther, eagerly.
“Oh, I don’t know. Sort of horrid—actressy. She had a pink silk wrapper with swansdown all over it—at four o’clock, think! I was awfully frightened when I got there; but it wasn’t the least trouble. She hardly looked at me, and she engaged me right off. She just asked me if I was willing to do a whole lot of things—I forget what they were—and where I’d worked before. I said at Mrs. Barcalow’s.”
“‘Mrs. Barcalow’s?’”
“Why, yes—my Aunt Amanda, don’t you know—up in Framingham. I always have to wash the teacups when I go there. Aunty says that everybody has got to do something in her house.”
“Oh, Louise!” cried her friend, in shocked admiration; “how can you think of such things?”
“Well, I did. And she—his wife, you know—just said: ‘Oh, I suppose you’ll do as well as any one—all you girls are alike.’”