“Other suits! Oh, what riches!” but then the old woman considered that the friend of the Marquise d’Ochtè perhaps had many other suits.
Judy donned the cap and apron and went on with the shop keeping. No one could have told her from a poor little bereaved French girl. The cap was becoming, as was also the organdy collar. Her face was pale and her eyes full of unshed tears, but the sorrow had given to Judy’s face something that her enemies might have said it had lacked: a softness and depth of feeling. Her friends knew that her heart was warm and true and that the feeling was there, but her life had been care free with no troubles except the scrapes that she had been as clever getting out of as she had been adroit getting in. She had many times considered herself miserable before but now she realized that all other troubles had been nothing—this was something she had had no conception of—this tightening of the heart strings, this hopeless feeling of the bottom having dropped out of the universe.
She felt absolutely friendless, except for her dear Tricots. The Browns could never see her again. They must blame her, as it was all her fault that Kent had come for her. If she had not been so full of her own conceit, she would certainly have sailed for America when all the others did at the breaking out of the war. Her mother and father seemed as remote as though they were on another planet. The war might last for years and there seemed no chance of their leaving Berlin.
“I’ll just stay on here and earn my board and keep,” she sighed. “The Tricots find me useful and they want me.”
In the meantime, Kent and Jim Castleman went and sat down in the Garden of the Luxembourg to smoke and talk it over, Kent still fondly clasping the serge dress.
“I’ll find her all right before night,” declared Kent. “She’ll be sure to go to the Bents’ studio sometime to-day. I’ll write a note and leave it with the concierge. I’ll also leave a note at the American Club. She must go there twice a week at least. I’d like to know where the poor little thing is,” and Kent heaved a sigh.
“I bet she is all right, wherever she is,” comforted Jim. “Say, Brown, I don’t like to mention it, but I am starved to death.”
“Well, you see when a pal is in trouble it seems so low to go get hungry.”
“But I’m not in trouble. Now if I thought that Judy had been in that place last night there would be something to be troubled about, but as it is, I just can’t find her for a few hours, or maybe minutes. Where shall we eat?”