Mrs. Langley clasped her thin hands. “O Anna, don’t speak so even in fun,” she begged. “Of course you will come next Saturday—or sooner if you have a chance. Only please don’t mention that baby to me again. It stirs me all up.”
“I won’t,” the girl assented meekly, adding: “for I sha’n’t be here to mention him or anything else. Honest and true, I can’t come any more without him. Whenever I am not in school, my place is with that blessed little monkey, Mrs. Langley. It’s mighty good of ma to mind him as much as she does since she doesn’t take to him, but I don’t mean to put it over with her unless I have to. And now it’s cold weather, the boys want to skate Saturday afternoons—and before long there’ll be sliding.”
“There’s that Alice Lorraine. How about her?” demanded Mrs. Langley.
Anna opened her eyes very wide. Extremely vague in general, unaware apparently of the existence of anyone outside her own four walls, sometimes, when her own interests were concerned, the woman was uncannily acute.
“O Mrs. Langley, I wouldn’t go off and leave that precious child with Alice Lorraine. She’s dear, but she’s absent-minded and I should be on pins and needles all the while for fear he was being drowned or scalded or kidnapped,” she declared.
“There’s that neighbor of Miss Penny’s, Mrs. Phelps,” Mrs. Langley persisted.
“For the love of Mike!” cried the girl in utter amazement. “Why, I should as soon think of asking the Lord Mayor of London to run over every Saturday afternoon.”
“Well, there must be someone who lives near,” Mrs. Langley murmured with unusual meekness.
“There isn’t, and anyhow, I wouldn’t trust Junior with ’em!” cried Anna. And suddenly she lost her temper,—something that was extremely rare with the other Miller girl. “I simply can’t come again without the baby and what’s more I won’t, so there! That’s all there is to it. Cash down or no goods delivered!”
And she flung herself from the place like a small whirlwind.