"A good bargain, I made. It's like this—she writes, you know, so she doesn't get her money everyday as you and I do, Janet. She's more like—well, Dulcie when she's sculpting. So I made a bargain with her that she'd not pay her rent just now, that she'll pay later. She's to pay some girl's rent for as long as she stays herself rent free, do you see? As soon as she can she'll pay her own rent and she'll pay another rent too, that's vairee business like, don't you think, Dulcie?"
Dulcie solemnly assured Janet she "couldn't beat it." She offered to enter into a similar agreement. Janet couldn't get any sense out of either of them. She retired baffled and defeated.
"All the same," confessed Dulcie, "You've got to quit bringing home losers, Miss Day. You ought to pick one winner just to square yourself with Janet."
Felicia promised. And, mirabile dictu, kept her word the very next week.
Of all the persons that her mistress brought home Janet really approved of only that one. But that one, as she grudgingly admitted, made up for the whole "shiftless crew."
"She's Christian," she assured Felice solemnly, "A Christian." Which was the more delightful from the fact that her sect was one that Janet had hitherto scorned as "Irish Roman Catolic." But just to look at Molly O'Reilly was to know you'd love her. Fat, oh, ridiculously fat, in comparison with the rest of that skinny household—ruddy, glowingly ruddy, beside that pale-faced "crew." Just by the law of contrasts they adored her when they saw her—especially after they'd tasted her heavenly food.
Miss By-the-Day met her in the laundry of a great house where she'd put in a day mending curtains and table linen. Not a bad sort of job if one had a suitable spot to work in; but a laundry, a steamy, soapy, wet-woolens-smelling laundry is not a comfortable place to sew. By noon Felice wanted to indulge in one of Dulcie's weeps—she was so nervous—when there entered, bearing a tray, Molly O'Reilly, with her blue sleeves rolled over her dimpled elbows and her red hair lightly dusted with flour.
"Here's something to put inside you—" she called to the perspiring colored woman who was washing and the tiny white person who was laboriously darning thin net, "something to think on save work." She stole a keen glance at the seamstress. "Yours goes on this bit of table; Susy, put down the top of your toobs and get a stool."
Ah, that food! Even Margot couldn't cook like Molly O'Reilly. Why, Molly cooked as Janet scrubbed, as the Poetry Girl wrote, as the Sculptor Girl modeled—by inspiration! There wasn't anything on that tray she put before Felicia that hadn't been made from crumbs that fell from the rich man's feast. Yet so cunningly had she warmed it, so deftly had she flavored it, so daintily had she garnished it that it seemed food ambrosial. Felicia let her fork slide into delectable crust underneath which snuggled the tenderest chicken she'd ever tasted in her life. Bits of carrots and celery and potatoes drifted idly about a sea of creamy gravy—um—when you go to Montrose Place order "Old Fashioned Chicken Pie."
The artist who had created this delight sat easily against the laundry sill and grumbled.