Bonnie May

by Louis Dodge

By the most casual chance Mrs. Baron was standing at her sitting-room window when the car stopped before the house, and when she perceived that it was Mrs. Harrod—Amelia Harrod, as she thought of her—who was crossing the sidewalk, she underwent a very remarkable transformation.

So complete a transformation, indeed, that Bonnie May, who was somewhat covertly observing her, sprang softly to her feet and became all attention.

Mrs. Baron’s face flushed—the child could see the heightened color in one cheek—and her whole attitude expressed an unwonted eagerness, a childish delight.

The truth was that Mrs. Harrod was one of the old friends who had seemed to Mrs. Baron to be of the deserters—one whose revised visiting list did not include the Barons. And they had been girls together, and intimates throughout their married lives—until the neighborhood had moved away, so to speak, and the Barons had remained.

It is true that, despite Mrs. Baron’s fancies, Mrs. Harrod had remained a fond and loyal friend, though she had reached an age when social obligations, in their more trivial forms, were not as easily met as they had been in earlier years. And it may also be true that something of constraint had arisen between the two during the past year or so, owing to Mrs. Baron’s belief that she was being studiously neglected, and to Mrs. Harrod’s fear that her old friend was growing old ungracefully and unhappily.

Then, too, the Harrods had money. Colonel Harrod had never permitted his family’s social standing to interfere with his money-making. On the contrary. The Barons were unable to say of the Harrods: “Oh, yes, they have money,” as they said of a good many other families. For the Harrods had everything else, too.

“Oh, it’s Amelia!” exclaimed Mrs. Baron, withdrawing her eyes from the street. She gave herself a quick, critical survey, and put her hands to her hair, and hurried toward her room in a state of delighted agitation.

She had not given a thought to Bonnie May. She did not know that the child slipped eagerly from the room and hurried down the stairs.

Bonnie May was, indeed, greatly in need of a diversion of some sort. Not a word had been said to her touching the clash that had occurred at the table during the Sunday dinner. She did not know that the machinery necessary to her removal from the mansion had been set in motion; but she had a vague sense of a sort of rising inflection in the atmosphere, as if necessary adjustments were in the making. Perhaps her state of mind was a good deal like that of a sailor who voyages in waters which are known to be mined.

However, she liked to go to the door to admit visitors, in any case. There may have been, latent in her nature, a strong housekeeping instinct. Or, perhaps, there seemed a certain form of drama in opening the door to persons unknown—in meeting, in this manner, persons who were for the time being her “opposites.” She assured herself that she was saving Mrs. Shepard from the trouble of responding from the kitchen; though she realized clearly enough that she was actuated partly by a love of excitement, of encounters with various types of human beings.