“What a dreadful old person,” Billie burst out at last, giving vent to her indignant feelings, when the girl staggered and almost fell on the floor.
“Oh, the poor dear is fainting,” cried Miss Campbell, hurrying to the dressing-table for her smelling salts, while the others quickly lifted the little maid to the bed. They opened her dress at the throat and moistened her lips with water and performed the numberless little services a woman, with any kindly sympathy in her nature, will never withhold from another woman who needs her help.
“She is much too young and pretty to be a servant,” observed Miss Campbell, looking down with pity into the white, tired face of the chambermaid, who appeared hardly older than her own girls, although her fluffy blond hair was drawn up into a knot on top of her head. Presently the color came back to her face, and she opened her eyes which were large and very deep blue.
“Are you better now?” asked Billie, waving a palm-leaf fan gently over her head.
The girl sat up and looked about her in bewilderment.
“Where am I?” she asked. Then her eyes caught Billie’s kind gray ones and memory came back to her. “It was so good of you to take my part and so stupid of me to faint! I was frightened, I suppose, and a little tired. I must be going, now,” she looked toward the door uneasily. “It would be dreadful to lose my place on the first day I began to work.”
“But you are not going back to work when you are ill, child?” exclaimed Miss Campbell.
“I’m afraid I must. It will be only a few hours more. I am off at twelve. My work isn’t hard. I only sort and distribute the fresh linen,” she added with a note of apology in her voice, which was soft and beautiful. The girls were struck also with her lady-like manner. They could see that she was not accustomed to being a maid because she never said, “Yes, Miss,” and “No, Miss,” like the usual chambermaid. But they were too polite to ask any questions, and presently she withdrew without their knowing much more about her than they had at first.
But they soon forgot the chambermaid and her troubles in the joys of Palm Beach. Probably nobody in the world can have a better time than four intimate young friends on a pleasure trip, and many admiring glances were turned in the direction of the Motor Maids as they sat in a row on the hotel veranda after breakfast, while Miss Campbell composed a letter in the writing-room. They were entirely unconscious of the attention they attracted, however, so interested were they in watching the rippling waters of Lake Worth already dotted with white sails.
Groups of people, dressed in white, strolled about the hotel grounds or sat on garden seats under the palm trees. It was that delicious lazy time in the morning when one is on a holiday and there is only pleasure to anticipate.