Jim opened the wide door for her, and ushered her into a little reception room, where the Misses Richards received their morning calls. Drawing a deep arm chair to the fire, Adah sat down before the cheerful blaze, and looked around her with that strange feeling one experiences where everything is new.
Willie seemed perfectly at home, seating himself upon a little stool, covered with some of Miss Eudora’s choicest worsted embroidery, a piece of work of which she was very proud, never allowing anything to touch it lest the roses should be jammed, or the raised leaves defaced. But Willie cared neither for leaves not roses, nor yet for Miss Eudora, and drawing the stool to his mother’s side, he sat kicking his little heels into a worn place of the carpet, which no child had kicked since the doctor’s days of babyhood. The tender threads were fast giving way to the vigorous strokes, when two doors opposite each other opened simultaneously, and both Mrs. Richards and Eudora appeared.
They had heard from Jim that a stranger was there, and as all the cross questionings concerning Adah elicited only the assertion, that “she was a lady,” both had made a slight change in their toilet ere starting for the room which they reached together, Mrs. Richards taking in at once the fit and material of Adah’s traveling dress, deciding that the collar, unbuttoned and shoved back from the throat, was real mink, as were the wristlets on which a pair of small white hands were folded together. She noticed, too, the tiny linen cuffs, with the neat gold buttons which Alice had made Adah wear. Everything was in keeping, and their visitor was a lady. This was her decision, while Eudora noticed only Willie on the bouquet which had cost her so much labor, and the alarming size of that worn spot in the carpet where the little high heeled slipper still was busy. Her first impulse was to seize him by the arm and transfer him to some other locality, but the beauty of his face diverted her attention, and she involuntarily drew a step nearer to the child, fascinated by him, just as her mother was attracted towards Adah.
“Are you—ah, yes—you are the lady who Jim said wished to see me,” the latter began, bowing politely to Adah, who had not yet dared to look up, and who when at last she did raise her eyes, withdrew them at once, more abashed, more frightened, more bewildered than ever, for the face she saw fully warranted her ideas of a woman who could turn a waiting-maid from her door just because she was a waiting-maid.
Something seemed choking Adah and preventing her utterance, for she did not speak until Mrs. Richards said again, this time with a little less suavity and a little more hauteur of manner, “Have I had the honor of meeting you before?”—then with a low gasp, a mental petition for help, Adah rose up and lifting to Mrs. Richards’ cold, haughty face, her soft, brown eyes, where tears were almost visible, answered faintly, “We have not met before. Excuse me, madam, but my business is with Miss Anna, can I see her please?”
There was something supplicating in the tone with which Adah made this request, and it struck Mrs. Richards unpleasantly, making her answer haughtily, “My daughter is sick. She does not see visitors, but I will take your name and your errand.”
Too much confused to remember anything distinctly Adah forgot Jim’s injunction; forgot that Pamelia was to arrange it somehow; forgot everything, except that Mrs. Richards was waiting for her to speak. An ominous cough from Eudora decided her, and then her reason for being there came out. She had seen Miss Anna’s advertisement, she wanted a place, and she had come so far to get it; had left a happy home that she might not be dependent but earn her bread for herself and her little boy. Would they take her message to Anna? Would they let her stay? and Adah’s voice took a tone of wild entreaty as she marked the lowering of madam’s brow, and the perceptible change in her manner when she ascertained that, according to her creed, not a lady but a menial stood before her.
“You say you left a happy home,” and the thin, sneering lips of Eudora were pressed so tightly together that the words could scarcely find egress. “May I ask, if it was so happy, why you left it?”
There was a flush on Adah’s cheek as she replied, “Because it was a home granted at first from charity. It was not mine. The people were poor, and I would not longer be a burden to them.”
“And your husband—where is he?”