“What did you say your husband’s name was, Mrs. Neal?”
“Why Neal, of course, oh, Henderson, Henderson Neal.”
Miss Talbert looked at her a little sadly, exchanged a few more banalities, and went on her assured way.
“I did hope she’d ask me to call,” Maggie murmured. “How am I ever to get to know anybody in this great town?”
On the floor above her lived a girl and her brother, Annie and Thomas Mason. The brother played and the girl sewed and kept house. Once Annie got a letter of Neal’s by mistake and brought it down to Maggie. She was in her living-room trying to shorten a skirt when Annie tapped.
She stepped to the door. “Oh, come in.”
Miss Mason came in, nothing loth. “I got your husband’s letter by mistake. He’s Mr. H. Neal ain’t he?” She held out the letter glancing about the room. “You’ve fixed it up real pretty here. The last roomers kept the place looking so bad. You going to stay long?”
Maggie didn’t know. She was transported at the sight of the pleasant-voiced friendly girl and the North Pennsylvania accent which carried with it something very wholesome and grateful.
Miss Mason was frankly curious. “You here alone all day? What do you do while your husband’s to work?”
“Oh, clean, and sew and—and nap,” Maggie laughed a little. “Don’t you want to come to see me sometime, now, this afternoon?”
Miss Mason thought she “might’s well, your room seems bigger’n mine ’cause we’ve got a piano and you’ve got a table there. Say, s’pose I was to bring my sewing down, and I could help you even off your skirt.”
After that they spent a great deal of time together. They walked in the quiet autumn evenings down dingy Fifteenth Street, past the hideousness of Washington Avenue, down, down the stretch of unswerving street to Tasker or Morris, through to Broad Street which is really Fourteenth. They sauntered back arm in arm under young but fading trees, past the hurry of flying automobiles, under the soft silver of the street lights. Then they turned up Catherine Street, stopped at the bakery for ice-cream or a bag of cakes and so to the house to bed.
It was a pleasant, almost a bucolic friendship. Both girls had rather simple tastes. Sometimes they went further up Broad Street to the theaters, choosing the ones where they met with the least discrimination. Once Maggie took Annie to the Academy of Music. They stood in line for their seats and Maggie looked at the billboards. One of them read:
Coming!
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Mr. Hubert Sanderson
Conductor
December 27th, 1910
Mr. Thomas Morse
will present
Miss Joanna Marshall
mezzo-soprano of New York
She turned away, a little sick.
Maggie usually paid for their outings. Annie’s brother made a pretty fair salary, his sister told Maggie, for he played at private dances for wealthy white people in West Philadelphia, Rosemont, Sharon, Chestnut Hill and various other suburbs.
“But he don’t give me much ’cause he wants to leave the country for good sometime. I keep house for him and he pays for the lodgings and for most of our food. I make what little extra I can by taking in plain sewing. Your husband’s right openhanded, ain’t he?”
“Yes,” said Maggie heartily. “He’s very generous and very kind.” She wanted to change the subject, for Annie was inquisitive—one never knew what she’d ask next.
“Funny, ain’t it,” pursued Annie, her mouth full of pins—she was at her everlasting sewing, turning up the hem of a bathrobe—“I ain’t never seen him yet, no, nor Tom neither.”
“Well, you will. Come and walk up to South Street with me. I want to get some postal cards.”
It was an aimless existence, but it had its points. Her mother was comfortable, she herself had ease, a husband and a companion.
She went out to market one chilly November morning and came back later than she expected. She had scarcely got in before Annie appeared, an unusual flush on her yellow, freckled cheeks. Annie had reddish, crinkled hair, which she wore brushed stiffly back from her high forehead into a hard, ungraceful knob; “rhiny” hair, Maggie knew Sylvia and the boys would call it. She could imagine how they would talk about Annie in their pleasant, unmalicious way. Joanna would strike her attitude and imitate her accent. Annie broke into these reminiscences.
“I been down here two or three times a’ready. Kind o’ rawish like.”
“Yes, I think it’s going to rain. I’ll light the gas-heater and we can sit here and thaw out. I enjoy a chilly day if it’s warm inside.”
“Kind o’ that way myself.”
“Oh, you said you’d been here before. Want to see me about anything special?”
“Oh, aimed I’d come set with you a spell. Me and Tom—now—we saw your husband last night.”
“That so? Where? How’d you guess it was he?”
“Near Bainbridge Street, then we watched him come in here. Why, Tom knowed him a’ready. I didn’t know his name was Henderson. I’d heard of him before myself.”
Outside a steady soaking rain had begun to fall in the gray somberness of the November afternoon. The gas-heater cast a ruddy oblong of light on the white ceiling. Maggie, who had been straightening out a paper pattern, crossed the room and threw her slight figure on the couch, huddling close against the wall. She shivered a little in the luxurious warmth.
“Isn’t it grand to be indoors? Where did you ever hear of my husband?”
She was becoming drowsy and did not notice at first that Annie had not answered her. When she did, she looked up suddenly to catch the girl’s doglike brown eyes fixed wistfully on hers.
“What’s the matter Annie?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, but there is. Are you sick? Has Tom been unkind to you?”
“Oh, it isn’t me. It’s you! Oh, Maggie, how could you?”
“What about me? How could I what?”
“Marry him?”
“Marry whom? my husband—why shouldn’t I?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“For God’s sake speak up, Annie Mason. What is it you know about him? Has he got another wife? Is
