Two ladies confronted Happie as she obeyed the summons of the upper bell. They were handsomely clad, and there was something familiar in both faces, which, nevertheless, Happie was sure that she had not seen before. With this haunting familiarity there was a certain hardness in the visitors' expression which was repellent. They were about the same age—well into their thirties—and carried their years with the jauntiness of intentional youth.
Happie ushered them into the small parlor, which they seemed to fill in every corner, and asked whom she should say had come to see Miss Bradbury.
"Say her nieces, Miss Helen and Miss Irene Bradbury," said one of the two. "Wait a moment, what is your name?"
"I am one of the daughters of Miss Bradbury's friend, Mrs. Scollard; the second one, Happie," said Happie. Something antagonistic in this very different Miss Bradbury's manner kept her from saying that she was Keren-happuch, named after the strangers' aunt.
"Happie! Then you are the one whom they called after Aunt Keren? Is Happie your abbreviation of Keren-happuch?" asked Miss Irene Bradbury.
"Yes," said Happie. "Shall I call Miss Bradbury?"
"Wait one moment," said Miss Irene Bradbury very low. "I see that you are very young, but you are not a child, and there is something that I wish to say to you. Miss Bradbury's family are greatly annoyed by her taking refuge in this little Harlem flat, after having already carried your entire family with her into the country for a summer that stretched out into half the year. It is extraordinary, the fancy that a woman of her usual sense and strength of mind has taken to people of this sort——"
"What sort, Miss Bradbury?" Happie quietly interrupted her. "My grandmother was Miss Bradbury's dearest friend."
"People who are not her kindred," said Miss Irene Bradbury, somewhat confused. "We understand your part of it—perhaps not your part since you are so young—but your mother's. We wish you to know, and to repeat to your mother, that we shall not allow her plans to succeed. If Aunt Keren should will away her fortune to you, to any of your family, we shall break the will, and we shall leave no means untried to prevent her continuing under your mother's influence. That is all. Repeat what I have said to your mother, but you will not gain anything by repeating it to Miss Bradbury."
Happie had turned white under these remarks, but she looked Miss Irene Bradbury over from head to foot with a scorn she richly deserved.