It was fortunate, considering the magnitude of the shock which she was to receive, that circumstances had given Steve’s Mamie unusual powers of resistance in the matter of shocks. For years before her introduction into the home of the Winfield family her life had been one long series of crises. She had never known what the morrow might bring forth, though experience had convinced her that it was pretty certain to bring forth something agitating which would call for all her well-known ability to handle disaster.
The sole care of three small brothers and a weak-minded father gives a girl exceptional opportunities of cultivating poise under difficult conditions. It had become second nature with Mamie to keep her head though the heavens fell.
Consequently, when she entered the nursery next morning and found it empty, she did not go into hysterics. She did not even scream. She read Steve’s note twice very carefully, then sat down to think what was her best plan of action.
Her ingrained habit of looking on the bright side of things, the result of a life which, had pessimism been allowed to rule it, might have ended prematurely with what the papers are fond of calling a “rash act,” led her to consider first those points in the situation which she labelled in her meditations as “bits of luck.”
It was a bit of luck that Mrs. Porter happened to be away for the moment. It gave her time for reflection. It was another bit of luck that, as she had learned from Keggs, whom she met on the stairs on her way to the nursery, a mysterious telephone-call had caused Ruth to rise from her bed some three hours before her usual time and depart hurriedly in a cab. This also helped.
Keggs had no information to give as to Ruth’s destination or the probable hour of her return. She had vanished without a word, except a request to Keggs to tell the driver of her taxi to go to the Thirty-Third Street subway.
“Must ’a’ ’ad bad noos,” Keggs thought, “because she were look’n’ white as a sheet.”
Mamie was sorry that Ruth had had bad news, but her departure certainly helped to relieve the pressure of an appalling situation.
With the absence of Ruth and Mrs. Porter the bits of luck came to an end. Try as she would, Mamie could discover no other silver linings in the cloud-bank. And even these ameliorations of the disaster were only temporary.
Ruth would return. Worse, Mrs. Porter would return. Like two Mother Hubbards, they would go to the cupboard, and the cupboard would be bare. And to her, Mamie, would fall the task of explanation.