"Who's that in the reception-room?" she asked when the greetings were over and she was warming her slender hands before the fire. "She's the prettiest dear. She was standing at the window and she smiled so sweetly at me as I came up the steps."
John looked at Dick.
"Yes," admitted that unabashed delinquent, "I left her at the window when I came up."
"Alas! poor child," sighed John, looking out into the night. "She'll be there soon."
"What is she going out for at this time?" Mary demanded. "I quite thought that she, too, had come to dinner. Who is she, Mrs. Sedyard?"
Upon her mother's helpless silence, Edith broke in with the story as she felt she knew it. Union Square, the discharged shopgirl, John's quixotic conduct. And John watched Mary with a lover's eye. He had not intended that she should be involved. A moment of her displeasure, even upon mistaken grounds, was no part of his idea of a joke.
But there was no displeasure in Mary's lovely face.
"Why, of course, he brought her home," she echoed Edith's indignant peroration. "What else could he do?"
"Well, for one thing he could have taken her to the Margaret Louise Home, that branch of the Y.W.C.A., on Sixteenth Street, only a few blocks from where he found her."
"Oh! Edith," Mary remonstrated. "The Maggie Lou! And you know they would not admit her. Who would take a friendless girl to any sort of an institution at this season? John couldn't have done it! I think he's an old dear to bring her right straight home. Let's go down and talk to her. She must be wondering why we all leave her so long alone."