Mr. Sweeney was so offended at this ungrateful suggestion that he got up, buttoning his coat with great dignity across his broad vest and walking majestically out of the house.

“It’s not my business, of course,” he stated at the door. “But I must say I do not understand this incident, not in the least, Mrs. Blair.”

Other people in London Junction were more astute, easily making interesting deductions from Mary Evelyn’s fortunately detailed report. At school the new girl, Myrtle Chase, told Lena she was not allowed to play with her any more, and the mother of Marcia’s seatmate requested that her daughter’s seat be changed. Papa unexpectedly took Aunt Lois’s part in public discussions and went so far as to tell Ed Hartwell that Mabel was not a lady in any sense of the word. Ed replied sorrowfully that sometimes a fellow found that out too late. He said that when a woman like Mabel came right out and refused to be a lady, she ought to have her bucket kicked right up between her shoulder blades. He said if she ever laid a finger on Lois again he’d do that very thing, in spite of being the best-natured fellow in the world.

20

MRS. JANE’S ROOMING house in Lesterville was on West Park Street, convenient to the markets and to the steel mills, which was perhaps the best that could be said for it. On one side were warehouses, old houses made into bakeshops, and stores with rooms to let upstairs, and on the other side the offices and outlying buildings of the steel works began, ending far off in the glaring sky above the mills themselves. Mrs. Jane’s had been mentioned to Papa by a stranger in the station, so it was here the Willard family found itself, bag and baggage, as suddenly as it had found itself once before, on Hodge Street. The reasons for this move were similar too—vague reprisals on Aunt Lois, fate, and all the other elements that forever challenged Papa. The children were puffed up with pride at being claimed by Papa and almost keeping house for him, you might say. Papa was working now for the High Class Novelty Company of Lesterville and was to be home nights—at least, he wasn’t to travel on this job for a time.

“I want a rest from the road, get my health back,” he said confidentially to Mrs. Jane when they moved in to the parlor floor. “The fact is, those cold hotel rooms and drafty trains can get a man’s constitution down in time. Many’s the night I’ve sat in some damn hotel room, shaking from head to foot with a chill, first hot, then cold, hands shaking so I could hardly hold a glass. Only thing for it is to carry a little brandy on you, take a swallow every five minutes or so till the spell is over.”

Mrs. Jane said she had spells of terrible dizziness, much the same, and found brandy the only cure. As Papa appeared on the verge of a chill and Mrs. Jane seemed to sense a dizzy spell coming on, they had a glass of brandy then and there, as they settled the fees and privileges of the new living quarters. The chief advantage of the new arrangement was that Mrs. Jane had lost three children herself—stillborn, accidents, and “cholery morbus,” so she was particularly well equipped to keep an eye on three motherless little girls. (Both Papa and Mrs. Jane wiped their eyes here and looked mournfully at the three girls who were comfortably playing robber cassino on the bed.) Mrs. Jane had plenty to do, with her millhand roomers, night and day workers, but she would make these three little dolls her special care, provide from her own table for them, at least once a day, see that they washed their ears and didn’t run the streets like hoodlums. So the deal was set and Papa said with satisfaction that he could stand just so much criticism from certain people, then he liked to step in and show them up.