“If you don’t mind getting up a bit early on Monday morning there’s a place close by here, a great big cheap store, where all the working girls go. We’ll get some kind of suitcase there, and we’ll buy two sets of their best warm underclothing. If your employer should see them by any chance you can say they were given you by a kind lady!”
And then they both burst into peals of girlish laughter. Jean had not laughed so heartily as that for many a long day.
“By the way, have you chosen a good name to call yourself by?”
“I’m going as ‘Elizabeth Chart,’ my mother’s maiden name,” and the laughter died out of her eyes.
Suddenly Rachel said, “I must go out and get my Sunday papers. When one is leading a lonely life one does depend tremendously on reading, and, I’m not ashamed to say it, on newspaper reading. Papers are my only luxury, and on Sundays I have a regular debauch!”
Jean was staring into the fire.
“I suppose you’ve read everything that’s been printed about, about”—and then she said rather defiantly—“about Harry and me? I know there must have been horrid things, for Uncle Jock made me promise not to look at the papers—not even at the paper they take in at Bonnie Doon.”
“Yes,” said Rachel North reluctantly, “I have seen a good deal about you, Jean. But everything so far about you has been kind.”
And then Jean jumped up from her chair.
“I hate that!” she exclaimed. “I’d far rather they said horrible things—as I know they do about Harry.”