Both girls looked at her. Poor Mrs. Marshall sat very straight, her thin cheeks aflame. Her expression betokened a conflict between incredulous anger and hurt pride.
"Elaine, you must be taking leave of your senses. What would your grandfather have said at the idea of one of his blood"--Mrs. Marshall hesitated, then evidently concluded that only the objectionable commercial term Peggy had made use of, was equal to the occasion--"one of his descendants getting a job in a real estate office?"
"I think grandfather would probably have said that circumstances alter cases," replied Elaine promptly.
Not having had the pleasure of the acquaintance of Mrs. Marshall's late father, Peggy was unable to surmise what that old gentleman's attitude would have been under such conditions. But she hastened to suggest, "Lots of awfully nice girls go into business offices nowadays, Mrs. Marshall."
Elaine was in a reckless mood. "I don't know as it matters what other girls do. It's a question of what I've got to do. We can't sit here and starve, just because grandfather was rich."
"Elaine!" cried Mrs. Marshall with a horror which was at least sincere. To acknowledge, even to Peggy, the pressing character of their need, seemed to the poor lady a shocking piece of indelicacy. Her weak chin quivered, as she struggled with her emotions. Peggy possessed enough of the divine art of putting herself in another's place to realize that the consternation, so absurd from her standpoint, was justified by those views of life to which Mrs. Marshall had always adhered. She racked her head for something which would soften the blow.
"If Elaine is going to work anywhere, Mrs. Marshall, she couldn't be in a better place than Uncle John's office. He'd be good to anybody, but, of course, he'd be especially interested in Elaine as long as she's a friend of mine."
"Young people nowadays," quavered Mrs. Marshall, her sense of injury goading her to injustice, "are not sufficiently mindful of what they owe the family name."
Elaine's flippant laugh jarred Peggy's sense of propriety. She looked at her reproachfully, but Elaine would not meet her eye.
"I suppose that's because we have to think what we owe ourselves," she suggested airily. "Clothes and something to eat, to say nothing of carfare."