"We aren't ashamed of it, Milly," she said to the cat. "It certainly is not beautiful, but it's clean, and sort of self-respecting, and those are the virtues of our class. He will understand that. I do hope you will like him, Milly," she added.
She hurried with her luncheon, gave Milly a bath, made a careful toilet herself. The same dark dress to be sure, but little fine collars and cuffs were added, to take away its austerity. She let her hair coil itself loosely instead of screwing it back as she usually did. She made these preparations, not at the dictation of vanity, for she was singularly free from it, but from an instinct to make herself fit for what she felt to be a crisis in her life. Whether Martin Christiansen said good or bad really did not matter so much as the fact that she had come to this point of testing—this day of judgment.
While she waited for his coming she let her mind return to Jerry and his latest difficulty. She laughed aloud at the memory of the girl's passionate absurdity. She thought back to her own first romance, a mad infatuation for the little town beau, to whom she never spoke. Yet how he had filled her dreams, how she had planned her marriage to him, under romantic circumstances, just as Isabelle had planned hers with Jerry. Artist-like, she appraised this self-revelation of youth, in its pitiful, lovable folly, and made it her own. As for poor Jerry, he was evidently doomed to stumble from one love affair to another, until death withered his charms. Too much love; too little love; so life goes grinding on, like an endless film of the sated and the hungry.
Milly jumped into her lap, purring.
"Milly, you're one of the Jerrys; you get nothing but affection. Is it because you demand it, or just because you are beautiful and people give it to you?"
She heard voices on the stairs, and opened the door wide, the big cat in her arms. Billy Biggs came first.
"Gen'l'mum to see yu, Miss Judd," he announced.
"Thank you, Billy. Welcome," she added simply to her guest. He took her hand in his cordial clasp, and looked his pleasure. He gave Billy a small tribute.
"You're a most excellent guide, my son," he remarked.
"I seen right away he didn't know this neighbourhood, Miss Judd, so I sez to him: 'What ye lookin' fer?'"