“Very nice, Mr. Towne,” she flushed, and her manner seemed to forbid further questioning. She went away, and he gave orders to the cashier to see that she had an increase in the amount of her final check. “She will need some pretty things. And when we learn the date we can give her a present.”
So on Saturday night Lucy left, and on the following Monday a card was brought up to Edith Towne.
She read it. “Lucy Logan? I don’t believe I know her,” she said to the maid.
“She says she is from Mr. Towne’s office, and that it is important.”
Now Josephine, the parlor maid, had a nice sense of the proprieties which she had learned from Waldron, who was not on duty in the front of the house in the morning. So she had given Lucy a chair in the great hall. Waldron had emphasized that business callers and social inferiors must never be ushered into the drawing-room. The grade below Lucy’s was, indeed, sent around to a side door.
However, there Lucy sat—in a dark blue cape and a small blue hat, and she rose as Edith came up to her.
“Oh, let’s go where we can be comfortable,” Edith said, and led the way through the gray and white drawing-room beyond the peacock screen, to the glowing warmth of the fire.
They were a great contrast, these two women. Edith in a tea-gown of pale yellow was the last word in modishness. Lucy, in her modest blue, had no claims to distinction.
But Lucy was not ill at ease. “Miss Towne,” she said, “I have resigned from your uncle’s office. Did he tell you?”
“No. Uncle Fred rarely speaks about business.”