In the fall Miss Gleason saw her heroine at an exhibition of pictures. She rushed across the main hall of the Museum to greet her. “Congratulate you!” she deeply whispered, “on realizing your dream! Now you are happy, now you can be at peace!”
“Happy? At peace?”
“In the good work you have taken up. Oh, nothing, under Gawd, is lost!” she exclaimed, getting ready to run away, and speaking with her face turned over her shoulder towards Mrs. Libby.
“Dream? Good work? What do you mean?”
“Those factory children!”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Libby coldly, “that was my husband’s idea.”
“Your husband’s!” cried Miss Gleason, facing about again, and trying to let a whole history of suddenly relieved anxiety speak in her eyes. “How happy you make me! Do let me thank you!”
In the effort to shake hands with Mrs. Libby she knocked the catalogue out of her hold, and vanished in the crowd without knowing it. Some gentleman picked it up, and gave it to her again, with a bow of burlesque devotion.
Mrs. Libby flushed tenderly. “I might have known it would be you, Walter. Where did you spring from?”
“I’ve been here ever since you came.”