"There's almost a year and a half yet," she said grimly. "Surely that's time enough."
"It would be for anybody but a Fargo," sighed her mother. "They're slow at everything. We can only hope and wait. It's been very hard."
"I'll try not to make it more so afterward," Jean returned. "I suppose I must go back to the Springs at first. When a girl goes out they take her—home. But I'll not stay. I'll go away at once."
"Go away! There are none of the relatives you can visit. The Tuttles all feel the disgrace as if it were their own. As for your father's folks—"
"I don't mean to visit. I mean to work—to live."
Mrs. Fanshaw focussed her parochial mind upon this outlandish suggestion, assuming, as was her habit with novel impressions, an air of truculent disapproval.
"Perhaps you still think you can gallivant about the country like a man?" she remarked.
"No. I've got over that. I shall find some woman's work."
"You mean you'll cook, scrub, do the servant's drudgery you've learned here? That would be a nice tale to go the rounds of the Springs!"
"I would cook or scrub if I had to, but I've been taught other things. One of the girls who's leaving this fall—her name is Amy Jeffries—knew no more about earning a living than I when she came here, but she has an eight-dollar-a-week place waiting for her in New York. She's going with a ready-made cloak firm. It was Miss Archer who got her the place, and she says when the time comes she can probably do as well by me."