“Oh, Cicely dear!” Pain crept into Nan’s words, though they were whispered.
“Well! Oh, Nan dear!” Cis tried to laugh at her. “Yes, I know I’m bad, but I was so tired! I was out till after one, danced, and ate such a supper! I did mean to go to the eight, but I turned over, stretched and—” Cis made a slight gesture that conveyed the suggestion of a passage beyond daily affairs.
“Cis, oh, Cis! And you are so fine, so splendid! Why don’t you make it perfect? You’re a Catholic,” sighed loving Nan, her gentle eyes clouded.
“I’m nothing else, at least, Nanny, but it doesn’t bother me a great deal, all this that has to do with such far-off things! I’m sorry, nice little Nan! I will brace up, I promise you, and go to Mass Sundays. When I get there, it’s hot and crowded, and I’m just there in my body, and not my mind, and it’s a mighty uncomfortable body, I can tell you that! I wonder if it makes much difference whether you go or not, when you go like an oyster? Sorry, Nanny,” Cis said again, seeing how grieved Nan looked. “I didn’t have your training; maybe that’s it. I went to public school and high school, and my mother died when I was eight, and my father was no good, and went off to his own ways when I was a baby, so I’m kind of a hybrid Catholic-heathen! Sorry, nice little Nan!”
“You’re the biggest girl I know, the truest and finest, and I’m sure God will pull you to Him. You’re too great to miss the Greatest,” said Nan, with such earnestness in spite of her muffled voice, and with such a light in her eyes, that careless Cicely was impressed.
“Put your candle beside Miss Jeanette Lucas’,” she said, knowing that the look in Nan’s eyes foretold prayers for her beloved Cicely’s safety.
“You two girls have talked enough in duet for one day,” remonstrated another girl, a little distance down the table from Cis and Nan. “We like a whack at Cis ourselves, Nan Dowling!”
“Won’t get much more chance to talk, duet or chorus,” said Cis. “Half past two, and the afternoon buzz is beginning.”
It was a particularly busy afternoon in this uptown exchange. Nan went off duty at five, but she waited that night to go out to supper with Cis, whose hours did not end till ten at night, and who supped in the restaurant on the top floor of the building, and returned to the exchange to finish her eight-hours’ shift.
Cis did not know what fear was; she went about the quiet streets after ten o’clock at night, when she was returning to her boarding place, with the same careless assurance with which she walked the streets at ten o’clock in the morning. There was that about her carriage, her free, graceful walk, her faultless complexion, her glowing, abundant, striking hair that made her a conspicuous figure; yet there was also in her entire effect that indifference to notice, that light-hearted frankness, that absence of self-consciousness, which reveals the Una-like girl who walks the earth fearing no man because she seeks no man’s admiration.