Mary remembered how, when she was Nannie's age, she had often sat in that outer office after hours, and Knox had talked to her. He had been thirty-five and she, twenty. He had a wife and a handsome home; she had nothing but a hall room. And he had made her feel that she was very necessary to him. "I don't know how we should ever get along without you," he had said.
He had said other things.
It was because he had spoken of her lovely hair that she had kept it brushed and shining. It was because his eyes had followed her pencil that she had rubbed cold cream on her hands at night and had looked well after her nails. It was because she had learned his taste that she wore simple but expensive frocks. It was because of her knowledge that nothing escaped him that she shod her pretty feet in expensive shoes.
He had set standards for her, and she had followed them. And now he would set standards for Nannie!
She spoke abruptly. "Is Dick McDonald coming to-night?"
"Yes. He has had a raise, Mary. He telephoned--"
The two girls were in Mary's room. Dinner was over and Mary had slipped on a Chinese coat of dull blue and had settled down for an evening with her books. Mary's room was charming. In fifteen years she had had gifts of various kinds from Knox. They had always been well chosen and appropriate. Nothing could have been in better taste as an offering from an employer to an employee than the embossed leather book ends and desk set, the mahogany reading lamp with its painted parchment shade, the bronze Buddha, the antique candlesticks, the Chelsea teacups, the Sheffield tea caddy. Mary's comfortable salary had permitted her to buy the book shelves and the tea table and the mahogany day bed. There was a lovely rug which Mrs. Knox had sent her on the tenth anniversary of her association with the office. Mrs. Knox looked upon Mary as a valuable business asset. She invited her once a year to dinner.
Nannie wore her blue serge one-piece frock and a new winter hat. The hat was a black velvet tam.
"You need something to brighten you up," Mary said; "take my beads."
The beads were jade ones which Mr. Knox had brought to Mary when he came back from a six months' sojourn in the Orient. Mary had looked after the office while he was away. He had clasped the beads about her neck. "Bend your head while I put them on, Mary," he had commanded. He had been at his desk in his private office while she sat beside him with her note-book. And when he had clasped the beads and she had lifted her head, he had said with a quick intake of his breath: "I've been a long time away from you, Mary."
Nannie with the jade beads and her red hair and her velvet tam was rather rare and wonderful. "Dick is going to take me to the show to celebrate. He's got tickets to Jack Barrymore."
"Dick is such a nice boy," said Mary. "I'm glad you are going to marry him, Nannie."
"Who said I was going to marry him?"
"That's what he wants, Nannie, and you know it."
"Mr. Knox says it is a pity for a girl like me to get married."
Mary's heart seemed to stop beating. She knew just how Knox had said it.
She spoke quietly. "I think it would be a pity for you not to marry, Nannie."
"I don't see why. You aren't married, Mary."
"No."
"And Mr. Knox says that unless a girl can marry a man who can lift her up she had better stay single."
The same old arguments! "What does he mean by 'lift her up,' Nannie?"
"Well"--Nannie laughed self-consciously--"he says that any one as pretty and refined as I might marry anybody; that I must be careful not to throw myself away."
"Would it be throwing yourself away to marry Dick?"
"It might be. He looked all right to me before I went into the office. But after you've seen men like Mr. Knox--well, our kind seem--common."
Mrs. Ashburner was calling that Dick McDonald was down-stairs. Nannie, powdering her nose with Mary's puff, was held by the earnestness of the other woman's words.
"Let Dick love you, Nannie. He's such a dear."
Dick was, Nannie decided before the evening was over, a dear and a darling. He had brought her a box of candy and something else in a box. Mrs. Ashburner had shown him into the dining-room, which she and Nannie used as a sitting-room when the meals were over. The boarders occupied the parlor and were always in the way.
"Say, girlie, see here," Dick said as he brought out the box; and Nannie had gazed upon a ring which sparkled and shone and which looked, as Dick said proudly, "like a million dollars."
"I wanted you to have the best." His arm went suddenly around her. "I always want you to have the best, sweetheart."
He kissed her in his honest, boyish fashion, and she took the ring and wore it; and they went to the play in a rosy haze of happiness, and when they came home he kissed her again.
"The sooner you get out of that office the better," he said. "We'll get a little flat, and I've saved enough to furnish it."
Nannie was lighting the lamp under the percolator. Mrs. Ashburner had left a plate of sandwiches on one end of the dining-room table. Nannie was young and Mrs. Ashburner was old-fashioned. Her daughter was not permitted to eat after-the-theatre suppers in restaurants. "You can always have something here."
"Don't let's settle down yet," Nannie said, standing beside the percolator like a young priestess beside an altar. "There's plenty of time---"
"Plenty of time for what?" asked her lover. "We've no reason to wait, Nannie."
So Dick kissed her, and she let him kiss her. She loved him, but she would make no promises as to the important day. Dick went away a bit puzzled by her attitude. He wanted her at once in his home. It hurt him that she did not seem to care to come to him.
It was a cold night, with white flakes falling, and the policeman on the beat greeted Dick as he passed him. "It is a nice time in the morning for you to be getting home."
"Oh, hello, Tommy! I'm going to be married. How's that?"
"Who's the girl?"
"Nannie Ashburner."
"That little redhead?"
"You're jealous, Tommy."
"I am; she'll cook sausages for you when you come home on cold nights, and kiss you at your front door, and set the talking machine going, with John McCormack shouting love songs as you come in."
Dick laughed. "Some picture, Tommy. And a lot you know about it. Why don't you get married and try it out?"
Tommy, who was tall and ruddy and forty, plus a year or two, gave a short laugh. "I might find somebody to cook the sausages, but there's only one that I'd care to kiss."
"So that's it. She turned you down, Tommy?"
"She did, and we won't talk about it."
"Oh, very well. Good-night, Tommy."
"Good-night."
So Dick passed on, and Tommy Jackson beat his hands against his breast as he made his way through the whirling snow, his footsteps deadened by the frozen carpet which the storm had spread.
Mary Barker was delighted when Nannie told of her engagement to Dick. She talked it over with Mrs. Ashburner. "It will be the best thing for her."
Mrs. Ashburner was not sure. "I've drudged all my life and I hate to see her drudge."
"She won't have it as hard as you have had it," Mary said. "Dick will always make a good income."
"She will have a harder time than you've had, Mary," said Mrs. Ashburner, and her eyes swept the pretty room wistfully. "Many a time when I've been down in my steaming old kitchen I have thought of you up here in your blue coat and your pretty slippers, with your hair shining, and I've wished to heaven that I had never married."
"Things haven't been easy for you," said Mary gently.
"They have been harder than nails, Mary. You've escaped all that."
"Yes." Mary's eyes did not meet Mrs. Ashburner's. "I have escaped--that."
Nannie and her mother slept in the back parlor of the boarding-house. They had single beds and it was in the middle of the night that Mrs. Ashburner said: "Are you awake, Nannie?"
"Yes, I am."
"Well, I can't seem to get to sleep. Maybe it's the coffee and maybe it's because I have you on my mind. I keep thinking that I hate to have you get married, honey."
"Oh, mother, don't you like Dick?"
"Yes. It ain't that. But it's nice for you in the office and you don't have to slave."
Nannie sat up in bed, and the light from the street lamp shone in and showed her wide-eyed, with her hair in a red glory. "I shan't slave," she said. "I told Dick."
"Men don't know." Mrs. Ashburner spoke with a sort of weary bitterness. "They'll promise anything."
"And I am not going to be married in a hurry, mother. Dick's got to wait for me if he wants me."
It sounded very worldly-minded and decisive and Mrs. Ashburner gained an envious comfort in her daughter's declaration. She had never set herself against a man's will in that way. Perhaps, after all, Nannie would make a success of marriage.
But Nannie was not so resolute as her words might have seemed to imply. Long after her mother slept she lay awake in the dark and thought of Dick, of the break in his voice when he had made his plea, the light in his eyes when he had won a response, his flaming youth, his fine boy's reverence for her own youth and innocence. It would be--rather wonderful, she whispered to her heart, and fell asleep, dreaming.