“We were saying just that, Bell,” said Mrs. Garden. “My daughters thought we could find such a person, but so far none has been suggested. Do you know one?”
Joel Bell shook his head. “Fact, I don’t,” he said. “I spoke to one woman, but she quick showed she thought I meant her to take Mis’ Bell’s place, my wife’s, you know, or else she meant to take it. I didn’t wait to find out which; either way my safety laid in flight, an’ I flew.”
In spite of themselves the girls burst out laughing at this.
“Don’t you laugh, girls,” said Joel, with deeper seriousness. “There’s been many a unfort’nate man married before this because he hadn’t the ready money, nor yet the courage to go to law to prove he had no notion of takin’ a woman who ran him down like a hunted deer. It’s a dreadful thing when a woman that’s at all set picks out some man to marry him! Matrimony is seriouser, anyway, than girls like you thinks, an’ I believe it’s the dooty of older folks to try to make the younger generation sense that.”
Mrs. Garden could never accommodate herself to the American freedom of speech on the part of those whom she employed. “Such awfully bad manners!” she said in her most English accent, when her disapproval was not more severe. Now she turned toward the house. “Anne must have called us, my dears,” she said. “Very well, Bell; we will try to find a matron for our Day Nursery.”
At the house Anne met them. “I called, but you did not hear, Mrs. Garden,” she said. “Lunch is nearly ready. Jane, Florimel, there is the strangest person waiting to see you. She came some twenty minutes ago, but would not let me disturb you. She would not give her name. She said she wanted to see one of the Garden girls, ‘the one with red hair,’ she said, or a younger one with black hair, but the red-haired one she would rather see. She is fearfully frowsy; light hair, I truly think it is bleached, but maybe not. She is in mourning, yet she has on a good deal of queer jewellery and a white voile waist, all covered with coarse machine embroidery. She is a queer person, Jane, altogether. What can she want of you?”
“I’ve no idea, Anne; can’t imagine who she is,” Jane began, but Florimel said:
“I can! It’s Miss Alyssa Aldine, and somebody’s died.”
“Oh, Florimel!” Jane remonstrated. She did not like to remember that she had sought Miss Aldine—Mrs. Peter Mivle—to ask advice as to her career. Nevertheless, Jane hastened to the library, not waiting to alter her costume, instantly sure that Florimel was right, and that it was Miss Aldine whom she should find waiting for her.
Florimel was right. Miss Aldine, quite as blowsy in her mourning as she had been in her pink wrapper, arose to meet Jane as she entered, followed close by Florimel.