“I should do nothing without being well paid for it. With a full purse you can accomplish wonders.”
“It would be such a relief to spend six months or a year free from looking over that hateful butcher’s book. Although I know that I and my two maids eat nothing, our bills are awful, and I can’t pretend to read butchers’ handwriting, can you? ‘3 cucks, 0.90’; that’s what I labored over for a whole morning, after I had ordered a miserable little cucumber to be cut up with my fish.”
“I am afraid the queen of your kitchen is a wiser potentate than you credit her with being. But, my dear, I have an inspiration. Yesterday I got a circular from a new ‘Bureau of Information Concerning Women’s Needs.’ It is intended to bring together refined and cultivated employers and employés, and to make a specialty of companions, chaperons, and governesses. Suppose I inquire--I know the woman at the head; she will take pains to oblige me--and see if she has any applications from young persons who have left school and desire to be ‘finished’ in the broadest sense--”
“Kate, Kate, you frighten me. You are such a steam engine in accomplishing what you set out to do I should be afraid to go out to walk this afternoon lest I should come in to find my treasure installed here in permanence.”
“You need not take her unless everything suits. I really believe such a girl would rouse you up, give you a new motive in life, and end by being a blessing in disguise--”
“Very much disguised,” remarked Gwendolyn, ruefully.
“It is now late February. You could sail in March by the Southern route to Genoa, and spend the spring in Italy.”
Gwendolyn flushed and sat bolt upright. Her soul was pierced by the chant of nightingales in the Cascine woods; of the singers upon the star gondola by moonlight on the Grand Canal; of the Amalfi boatmen resting upon their oars! How well she would know where to go, and how to enjoy the best of everything. She had been starving for beauty for four years!
“Let me--let me have time to think,” she said finally, with a sort of gasp.
“You poor victim, you have a most pathetic air,” answered Mrs. Payne, getting up to go, and kissing her. “Of course, you must think over it. Let me know to-night; and to-morrow morning, bright and early, I will order the brougham and set forth upon my quest.”