“Yes—there is that side, of course. But this Miss Duffield is a person who’ll bear watching. I never can see the point in sending these unsettled young women about the country organizing. They’re dangerous in some ways. Now I happen to know that Miss Duffield is the sort of young woman who receives men in her rooms—it’s only one room and there’s a bed in it even if it has a cretonne cover—”
“Addie—Addie—!”
“But that’s not all. At the same time she does receive men in her room—of course it may be all right and just a modern way—but she also gets passionate, very suspicious letters from other men.”
Mr. Thorstad frowned. But they reached the house just then and in the business of entering and commenting on his housekeeping Mrs. Thorstad let the matter drop. She flew about efficiently and her husband sat back in his armchair and watched her. There was no doubt of his gladness at her return. His pleasant gray eyes were contented, a little sad perhaps, but contented.
“Freda isn’t involved with any young men?” he asked.
“No—they tease her about young Smillie—that’s H. T. Smillie, First National Bank, you know, but she says that’s just nonsense.”
II
Yet it was that very night after the Thorstads had gone to bed and were sleeping in the pale light of a quiet moonlit sky, that Freda was forced to admit that it wasn’t nonsense.
All along she had hated staying without her mother, who after all was her reason for being here. She had to do it, however, or else abandon the chance of getting the job as secretary to the committee. Freda herself was a little homesick under all her excitement but, steadying her, there had come letters from her father which urged her to make the most of any opportunities which might come to her, which bade her make suitable and wise friends and learn as much as she could.
One or two of the young men Freda met stood out, as being more interesting than the others. Ted Smillie, because he was so attracted to her from the first, had more or less intrigued her. Barbara’s obvious dislike of the situation had forced both Ted and Freda into somewhat closer acquaintanceship than would have naturally developed, but they both worked against Barbara’s interference. There was in Ted, for all his amorousness, a real feeling for health and beauty. That drew him to Freda and her to him and there was enough in the glamour of being chosen by the most competed-for man as worthy of attention, to make Freda feel rather strongly in his favor. If he had been rude to her, as he might have been to the country guest of the Brownley’s, she would have seen him more clearly, seen his weakness, his impressionability, read the laziness of his mind, seen the signs of self-indulgence which were already beginning to show on his handsome face. She would have seen him as too “soft” of mind and body. But he was frankly at her feet and it would have taken an older head than Freda’s to analyze too clearly past that during those first few weeks.