“I don’t like your tone,” exclaimed Margaretta. “You have something dreadful to tell me.”
“Berty was out this morning and found a large, old-fashioned house with big open fireplaces. From it we would have a fine view of the river.”
“Tell me where it is,” said Margaretta, brokenly.
“It is where the first people of the town used to live when I was a girl.”
“It isn’t down by the fish-market—oh, don’t tell me that!”
“Just a block away from it, dear.”
Mrs. Roger Stanisfield gave a subdued shriek. “This is Berty’s doing.”
Her grandmother laid down her knitting. “Margaretta, imagine Berty in a fashionable boarding-house—in two rooms, for we could not afford to take more. Imagine the boarding-house keeper when Berty would come in trailing a lame dog or sick cat? The Lord has given me grace to put up with these things, and even to sympathize and admire, but I have had a large house and several servants.”
“But some boarding-house people are agreeable,” moaned Margaretta.