Courtship -- Fiction; Mate selection -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Women authors -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Edna Miles," she gasped, "my poor child, you can't eat in there!
It's the most expensive place in the city. Besides,--it is half-past
four,--you'll spoil your dinner!"
_Very_ peevishly and hollowly,
JANE.
_Thursday Night. On the Joyful New Job._
Oh, my dear people, but I do believe in Fairies! I've met one
personally! While we sat at melancholy mending this morning, my
doleful landlady and I, after my fruitless tour of the agencies, who
should dash up to our dull door but THE MAIDEN'S DREAM! In his
shining chariot! Mrs. Mussel said, "Edna, you go straight upstairs
and lock yourself in your room and _I'll_ 'tend to him!" But I was at
the door before he had time to ring the bell.
"Great luck," he said, "'fraid you'd be gone. Got a job yet?"
"No."
"Well, I was telling my sister about you, and she thinks she has just
the place for you. Want to hop in the boat and run out to see her now
and talk it over?"
Mrs. Mussel said of course he hadn't any sister, and that I ought to
be ashamed of myself and I would probably never be seen or heard of
again, and she knew he had a poison needle and she rang up the
Stranger's Friend, but before she got her connection I was spinning
up the North Shore. THE MAIDEN'S DREAM lives in a young palace and
Miss Marjorie, his sister, is also Peter Pan's sister. He explained
to me, as we went, that she had been thrown from her horse and would
never walk again, and so she "did things for girls, you know--keeps
her busy----"
She looks exactly like a Fra Angelico angel! She kept me to luncheon
in her room with her--oh, flesh-pots!--hot broth and tiny chops and
pop-overs and magic salad and chocolate and ginger-bread--and told me
about this extraordinary job. Then THE MAIDEN'S DREAM whizzed me home
for my things (I found Mrs. M. and the S.F. holding an agitated
Directors' Meeting), but when the S.F. heard Miss Marjorie's last
name, she beamed and brought me out here.
Miss Marjorie explained that I'm to be more or less of a
maid-companion to my pretty little mistress. She's a limp and lovely
nymph who's quarreled with her husband and is in hiding in this funny
old house which belonged to her family, in a weird neighborhood where
none of her own set would ever discover her. The house is comfortable
enough inside, but the locality is a rather rough one, and there is
not even a telephone. There is a cook and a cleaner-by-the-day, and
the new maid-companion, so she should be reasonably well looked
after.
Whoops, my dears! Fifty dollars a month and almost nothing to do!
This is the Promised Land!
Joyfully,
JANE.
_Monday._
DEAR PEOPLE,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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