“Now, Grace, please don’t do that,” protested Mrs. Durland, “you must take time to consider your future. Irene’s people are very ordinary and I never liked your intimacy with her when you went to school together.”
“Why, mother, Irene’s one of the finest girls I ever knew! She was a good student in high school and certainly behaved herself. She can tell me all about Shipley’s and the chances of getting in there.”
“I don’t like it at all, Grace,” replied Mrs. Durland. “It’s bad enough having my daughters going down town to work but I’d hate having you ask favors of a girl like Irene Kirby. I don’t see why you can’t wait a little and let Ethel help you find something more suitable.”
“But it won’t do any harm to see Irene and talk to her.”
They heard her voice at the telephone in the hall and caught scraps of her lively talk with Irene.
“Grace is so headstrong,” Mrs. Durland sighed. “And you never can tell how anything’s going to strike her. I’m always amazed at her inconsistencies. She’s the last girl in the world you’d think would want to work in a department store. She isn’t that type at all. Stephen, I wish you’d put your foot down.”
Durland looked at his wife blankly, trying to recall any other instance where he had been asked to put his foot down. If he had been a man of mirth he might have laughed.
“Grace ain’t going to do anything foolish; you can trust Grace,” he said.
“What did Irene say?” asked Ethel when Grace came back from the telephone.
“Oh, I am going to have lunch with her tomorrow at the store and she’ll tell me everything,” said Grace carelessly. “Well, daddy, it’s about time for the regular evening apple.”