“It means that ‘Saturday’s child must work for a living’ and Thurley said, ‘That’s me—Saturday.’ And ‘Sunday’s child is full of grace,’ and certainly Philena was, and ‘Monday’s child is fair of face,’ and nobody would ever want to see a prettier child than Lorraine was—or is—” “Never mind her! Go on about Thurley,” Hopeful was ordered. “It was the next month Philena died, and Betsey spent half she had in the bank to bury her the way she thought she’d like—a lavender coffin with quilted satin and she wore her graduating dress and a jet hair ornament that Thurley give her and Thurley sang at the funeral and never broke down onct! Some say Thurley Precore never loved no one, but I know she loved Philena, and since then she stayed on at Betsey’s and earned money singin’ and teachin’ piano and it seems as if she couldn’t put her mind on nothin’ else ... I dunno—” “Who’s the—boy?” There was a rasping tone in her voice. “The boy she is engaged to marry?” “Why, Dan Birge—” “Birge—” memories stirred in the numbed brain. “Grandson of the one you knew, Miss Abby. Dearie me, you’ve lost count of years!” Hopeful shook her head. “Will she be fool enough to marry him?” Miss Clergy insisted. “He’ll marry no one else, I guess. Seems as if he’s always cared for her and she’s made a man of him, too.” “That will do, Hopeful. The omelette was like leather and don’t put flowers on my tray again.” Miss Clergy’s dismissal was as brusque as her greeting. Below, Ali Baba and Hopeful exchanged opinions. After thirty some years of seclusion Abby Clergy had begun to care to hear of some one else. “Well, if any one else could make her care, it would be Thurley,” Ali Baba deduced, while Hopeful paused in the wiping of the last pot to say sagely, “If she could, she’d have Dan Birge blown off the face of the earth, just because he wants to marry Thurley.” “Some wimmen takes it harder’n others,” muttered Ali Baba whose patience with Miss Clergy was not of the same duration as his cousin Hopeful’s. For the first time in thirty-some years Abby Clergy actually opened the shutter of her window and let in the summer breeze. She drew a chair close beside it and rested her thin arms on the window ledge. A flush in the yellowed cheeks betrayed her excitement; her harsh voice was trying to hum the aria Thurley had sung so carelessly that afternoon. By chance it was the solo aria in the last opera Abby Clergy had seen. She had been escorted by Sebastian Gomez the pretender, and every one had turned opera glasses to look at this beautiful American girl who was to marry a supposedly dashing nobleman, according to newspaper gossips. What time and happenings had occurred since then! And Thurley, who had stirred the last spark of life in the embers of Miss Abby’s heart, was to marry a country bumpkin, a Birge, a storekeeper probably, a slangy, serge-suited, whistling nuisance with an odious bulldog and a new-fangled automobile—never! Not if the Clergy fortune could prevent it!