"I am very sure of it." Mrs. Burnham's laugh was half a sigh. "Poor people make us dreadfully mad at times, and we call them shiftless and improvident and lazy, and some of them are. They are ignorant and untrained. But the woman who is doing the hardest, bravest work in the world to-day is the wife of the workingman, struggling to be respectable and make her children so on wages that often aren't human, much less Christian. When I build a monument it's to be to 'Unknown Mothers.'"
She got up and pushed back her chair. "When are you going away, Miss Gibbie? I'm so glad you are making Mary go with you." She hesitated and with the tip of her parasol outlined the pattern of the rug at her feet.
"Miss Puss Jenkins came to see me night before last and she said such queer things she'd heard." Again she hesitated, and in her face the color rose to the roots of her hair. "I don't suppose I ought to speak of it, but when any one says anything about Mary I get so hot I'm not—"
"What did Puss say?" Miss Gibbie sat upright and the fan in her hand was still.
"She didn't say anything herself, but it was what Mrs. Deford said that—"
"What did Mrs. Deford say?"
"Miss Puss said she practically admitted her daughter Lily was engaged to Mr. Maxwell, though you'd tried your best to get him for Mary." She stopped. "I didn't mean to tell that. It's too silly to be repeated."
Miss Gibbie lay back in her chair and covered her face with the turkey- wing fan, and from behind it came laughter such as Mrs. Burnham had never heard from her before. "John engaged to Lily Deford! To /Lily Deford!/ My dear, he'd much rather be engaged to me. Lily's mother goes with Lily." She put down the fan and wiped her eyes. "Poor Snobby! I've tried to get John for Mary, have I? And she has tried to get him for herself, has she? Though this you don't tell me. I'm afraid as a purveyor of gossip you will never be a success. Puss is a past-master. On your way home just stop at her house, will you, and tell her I want to see her at once."