Sonia was an adept in thinking up remarks that carried a taunt or a sting, and she had one ready to greet her sister that night on her return; but as she looked up, she saw in Olga’s face something that held back the provoking words trembling on her tongue. Instead she said, half enviously, “You look as if you’d had a fine time. What you been doing?”
“Nothing but having a firelight talk with Miss Laura. That always does me good.”
“Hm!” returned Sonia. She wondered what kind of a talk it could have been to drive away the sullen gloom that had darkened her sister’s face for days, and bring that strange shining look into her eyes. Sonia shrugged her shoulders. At least, Olga wouldn’t hound her about finding work—not while she had that look in her eyes—and, with a mind at ease, Sonia went off to bed.
She went out the next morning, but came back in the middle of the afternoon in a gay mood. “I didn’t find any place,” she announced, “but I had a good dinner for once. I met—an old friend.”
Something in her voice and her heightened colour awakened an indefinite suspicion in Olga’s mind. “Who was it? Any one I know?” she asked.
Sonia made no reply. She had gone into the bedroom to put away her hat and jacket. When she came back she spoke of something else, but all that evening there was a curious air of repressed excitement about her.
“Oh, I forgot—the postman gave me a letter for you. It’s in my bag,” she exclaimed later, and bringing it from the other room, tossed it carelessly into her sister’s lap.
Olga read it and handed it back. “It concerns you. O, I do hope you’ll get the place,” she said.
The note was from Miss Laura to say that the manager of one of the large department stores had promised to employ Sonia if she applied at once.
“Isn’t that fine!” Olga cried.