“Not at all. The work requires care and, as you say, reliability. It might be stolen, you know.”
Madeleine snapped her eyes.
“Very well, then,” said Millicent in a resigned tone of voice. “It’s a great deal to pay, but I suppose I can’t do any better. I hear you do everything well, Miss Petit.”
“Miss Blount will do this,” answered Madeleine. “If I do things well, she does them better. Now, where do you want them cleaned? Down here or up at your place?”
“Oh, I would never let them out of my studio,” cried Millicent. “She must come there, where she can be under my eye.”
“But——” objected Judith, and paused at a glance from Madeleine.
It would be a crushing blow to her pride for her to go back to her old rooms and rub tarnished silver for this perfectly insufferable Millicent Porter. Yet fifteen dollars loomed up as quite a considerable sum, and, with five dollars added, could be paid to the stationery man on account.
Did Judith realize in her secret soul that the bitter dose she was now swallowing was only a dose of the same medicine she had once forced others to swallow?
“Very well, then,” said Madeleine, “we’ll give you as much of Friday and Saturday as will be necessary. We’ll take a lunch up on Friday so that we won’t have to come back for supper——”
She waited a moment, wondering if Millicent would not invite them to supper at the Beta Phi. Hospitality was so much a part of her upbringing that it was impossible to conceive it lacking in others.