“Well, I don’t know how to convince you, but poor Sidney must be somewhere wondering what became of her car. I thought that this one was the Holland car that was to take me home. I should have known the chauffeur, but the boys have driven us around most of the time. I am visiting at the Holland home, and I go to the same school that your daughter attends.”
Mr. Thorne was sitting forward now, looking seriously at Shirley. The chauffeur was looking back occasionally, as much as he dared. “I seen that she had different clothes on,” he said, and was answered only by a sharp glance from Mr. Thorne. But the reproving look was quite wasted.
“I was quite deceived,” said Mr. Thorne. “My friend, Mr. Scott, told me only this morning that a young girl who resembled my daughter was visiting his daughter from the school.”
“Yes, sir. I visited Caroline part of the time. Caroline, Hope and I have been together nearly all the time.”
Mr. Thorne then directed the chauffeur to go back to the place where he had parked the car to wait for Sidney. Meantime, he exerted himself to put Shirley at her ease. “I do not wonder that you mistook the car. Holland has one almost like it, perhaps exactly like it, though I never thought about it. Tell me a little about yourself Miss Shirley. Where do you live?”
Under Mr. Thorne’s kindly look Shirley found herself telling as she had told no one but the Holland family, about her home, her father and mother, the university and her one year at the girls’ school.
“Has it been a happy one so far?” asked Mr. Thorne kindly. He looked at her so thoughtfully and with so much interest that Shirley felt comforted some way. Here was one who did not resent her looking like Sidney.
“Not altogether,” Shirley frankly told him, “but it was all new, and with my father and mother so far away I have been a little bit lonely once in a while, but not very often, for there is always so much to do.”
“Has the close resemblance between yourself and my daughter made any complications?”
“A few, but nothing serious,” smiled Shirley. No one should criticise Shirley from anything she might say here in Chicago.