“At Mr. Chapley’s?”
“Yes; his store. That is where she works. You didn’t see her, but she saw you,” said Mrs. Denton; and then Ray recalled that Mr. Brandreth had sent to a Miss Hughes for the list of announcements she had given him.
“We saw you noticing us in the car, and we saw you talking with the conductor. Did he say anything else about us?” she asked, significantly.
“I don’t know exactly what you mean,” Ray answered, a little consciously, and coloring slightly.
“Why,” Mrs. Denton began; but she stopped at sight of her sister, who came in with the empty tumbler in her hand, and set it down in the room beyond. “Peace!” she called to her, and the girl came back reluctantly, Ray fancied. He had remained standing since her reappearance, and Mrs. Denton said, introducing them, “This is my sister, Mr. Ray;” and then she cried out joyfully, “It was Mr. Ray!” while he bowed ceremoniously to the girl, who showed an embarrassment that Mrs. Denton did not share. “The conductor told him that any woman would have given her baby her pocket-book to play with; and so you see I wasn’t so very bad, after all. But when one of these things happens to me, it seems as if the world had come to an end; I can’t get over it. Then we had another experience! One of the passengers that heard me say all our money was in that pocket-book, gave the conductor a dollar for us, to pay our car-fares home. We had to take it; we couldn’t have carried the children from the ferry all the way up here; but I never knew before that charity hurt so. It was dreadful!”
A certain note made itself evident in her voice which Ray felt as an appeal. “Why, I don’t think you need have considered it as charity. It was what might have happened to any lady who had lost her purse.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Miss Hughes broke in. “It would have been offered then so that it could be returned. We were to blame for not making the conductor say who gave it. But we were so confused!”
“I think the giver was to blame for not sending his address with it. But perhaps he was confused too,” said Ray.
“The conductor told us it was a lady,” said Mrs. Denton, with a sudden glance upward at Ray.
They all broke into a laugh together, and the girl sprang up and went into another room. She came back with a bank-note in her hand, which she held out toward Ray.