“Not Waldteufel of the Bazaar, mother?”
“The very same. You know your daddy and I were boarding with his mother in Potsdam when the war broke out, and two years ago your mother saved his wife and his tiny baby—after two dear little babies had died. So he thinks a great deal of the Madisons, my dear, and he’ll give me the very nicest things in that big shop for my little girl’s stocking. And suppose you hang it up New Year’s Eve this year, and next year—well, we won’t say anything about next year now, but just you wait!”
“Oh, mother—mother!” Merle sang, her slippered feet dancing. And there was no question at this minute that she would some day be beautiful.
“Don’t strangle me. There, I remember that dress—look at the puffed sleeves, Merle,” said her mother, still exploring the trunk. “I suppose the velvet is worth something—and the lace collar. That was my best dress.”
“Mother, mayn’t I keep it? And wear it some day?”
“Why, I suppose you may. I wish,” said the doctor in an undertone, whimsically to the other woman, “I wish I had more of that sort of sentiment—of tenderness—in me! I did have, once.”
“Perhaps it was the sorrow—and then your taking your profession so hard?” Miss Frothingham suggested timidly.
“Perhaps—Here, this was my brother Timmy’s sweater,” said the doctor, taking a bulky little garment of gray wool from the trunk. “How proud he was of it! It was his first—‘my roll-top sweater,’ he used to call it. I remember these two pockets——”
She ran her fingers—the beautifully-tempered fingers of the surgeon—into one of the pockets as she spoke, and Merle and the secretary saw an odd expression come into her face. But when she withdrew her hand and exposed to them the palm, it was filled with nothing more comprehensible than eight or ten curled and crisped old crusts of bread.
“Mother, what is it?” Merle questioned, peering.