A moment’s intense silence followed the matron’s public reading of this letter in the large hall which served as the community room of the Old Ladies’ Home. The matron, her young gray eyes twinkling and shining, looked from one old face to the other. Some were broadly grinning under their crowns of gray hair, some were hurt and scornful, some were only puzzled and amazed—these belonging to the old ladies who had held their shriveled, shaking hands as trumpets before their ears during the reading of the letter. And some faces were marred by a shrewd, keen, calculating look as if to exclaim: “I wonder if—!” The matron looked at them all, her smile slowly growing broader, then quickly she looked down at her desk and said with business-like briskness:
“That is a very honest letter. I wish you could all give it your serious attention. There is no fraud in it, for I have telephoned to the Old Men’s Home, and Mr. Jessup is a noble, straightforward character. Now, are any of you willing to see him this afternoon? I suggest that all those who can not or who will not give Mr. Jessup a chance for their hands this afternoon, leave the hall.”
There was a curious reluctance on the part of the old ladies to move. There was much wagging of heads, much nudging of elbows, whispers and winks and murmurs from every quarter, but no one stirred. Those who really had no personal interest or legitimate right to an interest in Mr. Jessup’s quest for a wife stayed to see what the others might do. The matron repeated her request. Then old Mrs. Smith, bent and humpbacked, took up her cane and hobbled slowly toward the stairway.
“Ef he wanted me,” she declared with mock asperity, “he should oughter come twenty year ago. Ye notice,” she added, looking over her shoulder with her sharp, shrewd peaked face, “he didn’t tell how old he was.”
“He’s sixty-nine,” laughed the matron. “Most men of his age would have insisted on a wife of eighteen.”
There was a scurrying sound among the group of old ladies and suddenly there darted across the hall a younger, slimmer, straighter figure than Mrs. Smith’s.
“Miss Ellie!” protestingly called the matron, “where are you going?”
Miss Ellie paused, her face flushed with shame to think she had not fled from the hall before. She paused and looked at the matron. However old she was, Miss Ellie did not look more than fifty years. Her hair was luxuriant, half silver, half gold, faded, yet giving a curious effect of a halo of moonlight. The flush mounted higher up the spinster’s cheeks until it crept over her forehead to the edge of her hair. For a moment she stood thus, looking at the youthful matron. Then, with a world of reproach in her tones, she said simply: “Miss Jessica!” Then she went up the stairs with quick and trembling limbs, but with an air of dignity that acted as a rebuke upon those lingering the hall.
“Proud Miss Ellie!” murmured Jessica, herself feeling ashamed.
“I do think,” began Mrs. Honan in a loud, strident key, “I do think myself that the man didn’t show very fine feeling. The idea of him a-spectin’ a woman ter jump at his head. Ef he wanted a wife, why didn’t he come a-lookin’ around modest an’ quiet-like in the good, old fashioned way?”