He then presented his card to her, after which he lifted his hat, and bowed to both girls as if they had been the most aristocratic ladies in the land, and then left them.
Brownie looked at the card.
It bore the name of Wm. H. Alcott, M. D.
Wondering what object Wm. H. Alcott, M. D., could have in view regarding her, she carefully put the little bit of pasteboard in her pocketbook, and then the two young girls hastened home, arriving there just as their landlady was about locking the doors for the night.
“You’re late,” she said, grimly, and with a suspicious look into Brownie’s beautiful face, she added: “I don’t believe in girls o’ your age walking the streets at this time o’ night. I only advertise to take respectable boarders.”
Brownie’s proud spirit boiled at these insulting words, but she did not deign to notice them further than by lifting her proud head a trifle more haughtily, as she swept up the stairs to her own room, followed by the more subdued and trembling Mattie.
CHAPTER IX
CHANGE OF OCCUPATION
The next day but one, while Brownie was trying her utmost to do her allotted task and get out of the factory an hour earlier, that she might slip down to the reading-room and finish that little French romance in which she had been so deeply interested, Miss Walton came to her and told her, in her grim, curt way, that she was wanted in the office.
Somewhat disturbed by this unexpected summons, she laid aside her work, removed her dainty white apron, then, with heightened color, but a dignified mien, she bent her steps toward the room where she had been received upon her arrival, and which she had not entered since.
Upon opening the door, she was surprised to find sitting, in confidential communication with Mr. Coolidge, Mr. Alcott, the gentleman whose acquaintance she had made in the reading-room two evenings previous.