“Pity you’re on duty all this afternoon and evening! But I’m going to Mass to-morrow, sure. If you go to the eight I’ll meet you and tell you all I know,” Cis suggested.
“All right; that’s fine!” Nan’s face brightened. “It’s time I went home to lunch, if I’m to be at the office by one. Remember, you’re to spend to-morrow night with me. Oh, Cis! Your last night!”
“Oh, I don’t know! I look forward to many more nights, Nanny, and some of them with you!” laughed Cis, persistently cheerful.
Cis dressed for her call on Miss Jeanette Lucas with more trepidation than she would have been willing to acknowledge. She looked exceedingly well in setting forth, all in white; plain-tailored linen skirt; fine hand-wrought shirt-waist; a simple white hat of soft straw, with a soft white bow on one side its sole trimming; her masses of glowing, shining red hair emphasized by its snowy setting.
Cis noted her effects in the mirror with approval.
“Not so bad, Cicely, my dear,” she said aloud. “Neat, but not gaudy—except your hair! You’re not in the least a beauty, but you look kept-together, and I’m not ashamed to walk out with you, Miss Adair!”
She nodded at her reflection in the glass, sighed as she took up gloves, which she detested, and ran downstairs, dreading her coming call, yet afraid of being unpunctual.
The Lucas house stood back from the street behind its tall trees, screened from its surroundings, although its neighborhood was the best in town. “The old Lucas place” was a landmark, built shortly after the building of the Republic; it had been finished in time to entertain Lafayette when he had returned to see the new order which his youthful love of adventure had helped to establish on the western continent. It had been deemed a pity that the old estate was exposed to the danger of ultimate transformation into a Roman Catholic institution by the conversion of its present owner to the Faith of France, a Faith which might do very well for French heroes, born to it, but did not do at all for unheroic Americans.
It was an unwarranted anxiety that apprehended such a transformation for the stately house; besides Jeanette, his oldest daughter, Robert Lucas had an older married son, three younger boys and two younger girls, so that heirs were not wanting to save the house from a Sisterhood, nor was its neighborhood falling off to bring about a desire on the part of the Lucas family to sell it.
Cis went up its broad front walk to its wide, simply beautiful front door, impressed and quieted by the repose, the certainty of fundamental things, which reached her even on the exterior of the house.