When she reached Washington Square again, she said something of this to
Miss Wardrop, who nodded comprehendingly.
"Every one feels that way for a time," she said; "it's like sitting out a cotillion by one's self. What you need is something or somebody to pull you into the whirl."
"I suppose that is so," agreed the girl,—"but where am I to find it—or him? I don't know anybody who is in. Of course I have Uncle Silas's letter to Mr. Wintermuth, but I didn't really know whether I'd have the courage to use it or not."
"Who may Mr. Wintermuth be?" demanded her aunt.
"A friend of Uncle Silas, and the President of the Guardian Fire
Insurance Company."
"Fire Insurance? A fire insurance company? Wait one moment.
Jenks. . . . Jenks! Bring me that envelope from the mantelpiece. . . .
No," she added, "my policy is not in the Guardian. I thought perhaps it
might be."
"What is the matter?" inquired her niece. "Have you had a fire?"
"Yes, I have," returned her aunt, "or rather Jenks has. He burned off the lamp shade from my reading lamp. And Jane Vanderdecken says because he did it out of sheer clumsiness I cannot ask the company to pay for it."
Helen remembered the shade in question, which had been in the eyes of all save its owner a horror upon horrors, a mausoleum preserving, apparently for all time, the ghastly glories of a dead era of alleged ornamentation. So it was with dubious sympathy that she said:—
"I don't know whether Jane Vanderdecken is right or not."