"Great luck," he said, "'fraid you'd be gone. Got a job yet?"
"No."
"Well, I was telling my sister about you, and she thinks she has just the place for you. Want to hop in the boat and run out to see her now and talk it over?"
Mrs. Mussel said of course he hadn't any sister, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself and I would probably never be seen or heard of again, and she knew he had a poison needle and she rang up the Stranger's Friend, but before she got her connection I was spinning up the North Shore. The Maiden's Dream lives in a young palace and Miss Marjorie, his sister, is also Peter Pan's sister. He explained to me, as we went, that she had been thrown from her horse and would never walk again, and so she "did things for girls, you know—keeps her busy——"
She looks exactly like a Fra Angelico angel! She kept me to luncheon in her room with her—oh, flesh-pots!—hot broth and tiny chops and pop-overs and magic salad and chocolate and ginger-bread—and told me about this extraordinary job. Then The Maiden's Dream whizzed me home for my things (I found Mrs. M. and the S.F. holding an agitated Directors' Meeting), but when the S.F. heard Miss Marjorie's last name, she beamed and brought me out here.
Miss Marjorie explained that I'm to be more or less of a maid-companion to my pretty little mistress. She's a limp and lovely nymph who's quarreled with her husband and is in hiding in this funny old house which belonged to her family, in a weird neighborhood where none of her own set would ever discover her. The house is comfortable enough inside, but the locality is a rather rough one, and there is not even a telephone. There is a cook and a cleaner-by-the-day, and the new maid-companion, so she should be reasonably well looked after.
Whoops, my dears! Fifty dollars a month and almost nothing to do! This is the Promised Land!
Joyfully,
Jane.
Monday.