"Oh, Aunt Kate, aren't you ashamed! When I ironed all your dish-towels last night, when you were setting bread, and I made the popovers Sunday!" Norma kissed her aunt, brushed a dab of cornstarch from the older woman's firm cheek, and performed a sort of erratic dance about the protestant and solid figure. "I'm a poor working girl," she said, "and I get dragged out with my long, hard day!"
"Well, God knows that's true, too," her aunt said, with a sudden look of compunction; "you may make a joke of it, but it's no life for a girl. My dear," she added, seriously, holding Norma with a firm arm, and looking into her eyes, "I hope I did no harm by what I did to-day! I did it for the best, whatever comes of it."
"You mean stirring up the whole thing?" Norma asked, frowning a little in curiosity and bewilderment. "Going to see her?"
"That—yes." Mrs. Sheridan rubbed her forehead with her hand, a fashion she had when puzzled or troubled, and suddenly resumed, with a great rattling of pans and hissing of water, her operations at the sink. "Well, nothing may come of it—we'll see!" she added, briskly. Norma, who was watching her expectantly, sighed disappointedly; the subject was too evidently closed. But a second later she was happily distracted by the slamming of the front door; Wolf and Rose Sheridan had come in together, and dinner was immediately served.
Norma recounted, with her own spirited embellishments, her adventures of the afternoon as the meal progressed. She had had "fun" getting to the office in the first place, a man had helped her, and they had both skidded into another man, and bing!—they had all gone down on the ice together. And then at the shop nobody had come in, and the lights had been lighted, and the clerks had all gathered together and talked. Then Aunt Kate had come in to have lunch, and to have Norma go with her to the gas company's office about the disputed charge, and they had decided to make, at last, that long-planned call on the Melroses. There followed a description of the big house and the spoiled, pretty girl, and the impressive yet friendly old lady.
"And Aunt Kate—I'm sorry to say!—talked her into a nervous convulsion. You did, Aunt Kate—the poor old lady gave one piercing yell——"
"You awful girl, there'll be a judgment on you for your impudence!" her aunt said, fondly. But Rose looked solicitously at her mother, and said:
"Mother looks as if she had had a nervous convulsion, too. You look terribly tired, Mother!"
"Well, I had a little business to discuss with Mrs. Melrose," Mrs. Sheridan said, "and I'm no hand for business!"
"You know it!" Wolf Sheridan concurred, with his ready laugh. "Why didn't you send me?"