Finding no bell, Marjorie removed her glove and knocked on the weather-stained front door. It was opened by a frail little woman with a white, tired face and faded blue eyes. She stared in amazement at the trim, fur-coated girl before her, whose attractive appearance betokened affluence. “How do you do?” she greeted in evident embarrassment.
“Good afternoon. Are you Mrs. Warner?” Marjorie asked brightly. “I have come to see Lucy. How is she to-day? I am Marjorie Dean.”
“Oh, are you Miss Dean? I mailed a letter she wrote you several days ago. Come in, please,” invited the woman cordially. “I am very glad to see you. I am sure Lucy will be. She is better but still in bed. Will you take off your wraps?”
“No, thank you. I can’t stay very long. I feel guilty at not coming to see her sooner. What is the trouble with her—tonsilitis? So many people in Sanford are having it.” Marjorie looked slightly mystified over Mrs. Warner’s reference to the letter. She had received no letter from Lucy. She decided, however, that she would ask Lucy.
“No; she was threatened with pneumonia, but managed to escape with a severe cold. I will take you to her. She is upstairs.”
Following Mrs. Warner up a narrow stairway that led up from a bare, cheerless sitting room, Marjorie was forced to contrast the dismal place with the Deans’ luxurious living room. Why was it, she sadly pondered, that she had been given so much and Lucy so little? The Warners’ home was even more poverty-stricken than the little gray house in which Constance Stevens had once lived. Then she had deplored that same contrast between herself and Constance.
“Miss Dean has come to see you, Lucy,” said Mrs. Warner. Marjorie had followed the woman into a plain little bedroom, equally bare and desolate.
“You!” Glimpsing Marjorie behind her mother, Lucy sat up in bed, her green eyes growing greener with horrified disapproval.
“Yes, I.” Marjorie flushed as she strove to answer playfully. That single unfriendly word of greeting had wounded her deeply. The very fact that, half sick herself, she had waded through the snow to call on Lucy gave her a fleeting sense of injury. She tried to hide it by quickly saying: “I must apologize for not visiting you sooner. Our team has had so many mishaps, I have been busy trying to keep things going. I brought you some fruit to cheer you up.”
“I will leave you girls to yourselves,” broke in Mrs. Warner. As she went downstairs she wondered at her daughter’s ungracious behavior to this lovely young friend. Lucy was such a strange child. Even she could not always fathom her odd ways.