Mary Louise and Josie OGorman | Page 6

on the office door. Josie had opened the door and there had entered
a woman and two children, a girl of eight and a boy of about six. The
girl carried a badly wrapped bundle of clothes.

Mary Louise and Josie felt a keen interest in all three. The woman was
young--under thirty. She was handsome, with raven black hair and
well-cut features. Her face was pale and her eyes gloomy. She carried
herself with a slow, lazy grace. The good lines of her tall figure
asserted themselves in spite of the cheap, ill-fitting serge suit. Josie
always noticed hands and feet, because she declared they were more
difficult to disguise than any other portion of one's anatomy. One
glance at the woman's ungloved hands made Josie wonder at the
well-kept nails and dimpled knuckles.
"No horny-handed daughter of toil, at least," was her mental note. She
then instinctively glanced at the woman's feet.
"Too well shod for the serge suit," was her verdict, "high arched triple
A with French heels, about a five, which is small for a person of her
height. She must be at least five feet, ten inches."
This inventory took Josie the fraction of a second, so quick was she to
see and pigeon-hole her observations in her well-ordered brain.
The children had evidently been crying. The girl's eyes and nose were
red and the boy at intervals gave a dry sob as though he had been
through a storm of weeping and could with difficulty stop. They clung
to each other as they would had they been drowning. The woman
pushed them into the room. The children's clothes were the worse for
wear, and untidy. Their faces were dirty and showed signs of grimy
little knuckles having been dug into streaming eyes. The eyes of both
children were blue, as blue as cornflowers, and their hair very light, the
boy's curling in tight rings but the girl's straight and bobbed.
"I want to see the manager," said the woman in a well-modulated voice.
"Dr. Weston will be here in a few minutes," said Mary Louise. "Won't
you sit down?"
The young woman sank into a chair. She paid no attention to the
children, but Josie found them a seat on a bench by the window. The
little girl lifted the boy to the bench and put her arm around his

shoulders, drawing him close to her sisterly bosom.
"Quite warm today," said Josie to the woman.
Mary Louise could with difficulty keep from giggling. It was so foreign
to Josie's character to discuss the weather.
"Think so?" answered the woman shortly.
"Not so warm as it was yesterday, but still a little unseasonable,"
persisted Josie. "I find a suit quite warm, but then, what is one to
wear?"
Mary Louise listened in amazement. Josie talking weather and clothes!
She had reduced the problem of dress to a science and having done so
dismissed the matter from her mind. As for the weather, she had
frequently declared that all weather was good if one just accepted it.
"Clothes are getting a little cheaper than they were last spring," she
chattered on, "almost pre-war prices at Temple & Sweet's this week.
Charming georgette blouses for a mere song and shoes at a great
bargain if one wears a narrow last."
The woman was plainly interested.
"Temple & Sweet's?" she murmured, and her glance instinctively fell
on her own well-turned arch and narrow toe.
Suddenly the little boy's sobs got the better of him and he wept
convulsively. His sister hugged him more closely and with the hem of
her skirt wiped his eyes. She shook her own tow head and her blue eyes
snapped dangerously as the woman said roughly: "Stop your bawling!"
"Peter, dear, please!" she whispered, but Peter could not stop. Mary
Louise went over and sat on the bench by the children.
"You mustn't cry, my boy," she said gently. "Whatever troubles you I
am sure will come out right. Look out of the window at that robin. Isn't
he busy? Do you know what he is doing? He is building his nest. There

is his wife. She is going to help him. What a good little wife she is! She
thinks it is better to help because her husband is always stopping and
singing. There he goes now! A cunning little teasing song the robin
sings. I love to hear him in the spring. He always sounds so gay and
cheery. Do you know what will happen when they get the nest built?"
"Wha-at?" sobbed the boy. The tears had ceased and the sobs were
almost under control.
"The little wife bird will lay four beautiful eggs. They will be a
greenish blue, the blue that people call robin's egg blue. And then she
will