"LET ME EXPLAIN IT," FREDERICA'S MAN OF BUSINESS SAID ... AND
PROCEEDED TO PUT THE PROJECT INTO WORDS OF THREE LETTERS
The two ladies were silent with dismay and ignorance. Laura, sucking a piece of lemon, and seeing a chance to "root," said, "How bully to have an office! I'm going to make her take me as office boy."
"The Lord only knows how she got the idea," Arthur Weston went on, "but it isn't entirely bad. I confess I wish her ambition would content itself with a post-office address, but nothing short of a real office will satisfy her. She has her eye on one in the tenth story of the Sturtevant Building; I am on the third, you know. But I think she can do it all on her allowance, though rent and advertising will use up just about all her income."
"I will never consent to it," Mrs. Payton said, angrily. "It is absurd, anyhow! Freddy, to hunt up houses for elderly ladies—Freddy, of all people! She knows no more about houses, or housekeeping, than—than that fire-screen! Just as an instance, I happened to tell her that I couldn't remember whether I had seventy-two best towels and eighty-four ordinary towels, or the other way round; I was really ashamed to have forgotten which it was, and I said that as soon as I got time I must count them. (Of course, I have the servants' towels, too; five dozen and four, with red borders to distinguish them.) And Freddy was positively insulting! She said women whose minds had stopped growing had to count towels for mental exercise. When I was a girl, I should have offered to count the towels for my mother! As for her finding apartments for elderly ladies, I would as soon trust a—a baby! Do you mean the Mason Grahams, Mr. Weston? Miss Eliza and Miss Mary? Mama knows them. You've met them, too, haven't you, Bessie? Well, I can only say that I should be exceedingly mortified to have the Misses Graham know that any Payton girl was behaving in such an extraordinary manner. The real-estate business! She might as well go out as a servant."
"She would make more money as a cook," he admitted. But he could not divert the stream of hurt and angry objections. Once Mrs. Childs said to tell Fred her uncle William would say it was perfect nonsense; and once Laura whispered to Mr. Weston that she thought it would be great sport to hunt flats for flatlings; to which he whispered back: "Shoal. 'Ware shoal, Laura."
There were many shoals in the distressed argument that followed, and even Arthur Weston's most careful steering could not save some bumps and crashes. In the midst of them the car came clattering down the street, and after a while went clattering back; and still the three elders wrangled over the outlaw's project, and Laura, sitting on the arm of her mother's chair, listened, giggling once in a while, and saying to herself that Mr. Weston was a perfect lamb—for there was no doubt about it, he, too, was "rooting" for Fred.
"I must go," Mrs. Childs said, at last, in a distressed voice. "No, Lolly, we haven't time to walk; we must take the car. Oh, Ellen, I meant to ask you: can't you join my bridge club? There's going to be a vacancy, and I'm sure you can learn—"
"Oh, my dear, I couldn't possibly! I'm so busy; I haven't a minute—"
"Well, think it over," Mrs. Childs urged. "And, Nelly dear, I know it will be all right about Fred. I'm sure William would say so. Don't worry!"