Just here a page brought in a letter which she glanced through with an “Excuse me, please.”
“Oh, dear! Now Laura can’t come to-morrow! She is certainly the most unfortunate being in the universe. She became very much interested in a deaf man that she met in her settlement work, and so as to give the poor thing employment she appointed him Superintendent of the Working Boys’ Club. Now the working boys refuse to play with him and the directors have had a meeting asking Laura to remove him at once. I do think they might have endured him one season when I gave him a twenty-dollar ear-trumpet, but some people are utterly unreasonable; and here I am, in need of advice every moment, and Laura kept in the city!”
“Haven’t you any family?”
“Not a soul; have you?”
“No one but a cousin.”
“I believe nobody nice and interesting has a family nowadays. Laura has no one but an uncongenial stepmother, and that is the reason we are so intimate. I am so giddy and frivolous, and Laura is so noble and self-sacrificing that I try to form myself on her now and then, when I’m not too busy.”
“You live with her, do you?”
“Oh, no! I don’t live anywhere in particular. Of course I have a house and a lady housekeeper, but she doesn’t count. I’ve been staying mostly with a Mrs. Beckett, an old friend of my mother’s. She is the dearest and loveliest woman in the world and I can’t bear to be away from her.”
“Why can’t she join forces with you if you are so alone in the world?”
“Because there’s a son.”