young. Nobody could
object to that."

"And I said board work might prove too arduous for them."

"And I said our board was too big as it was."

"I was for them all the time."

"And I!"

"And I!"

CHAPTER III
MARY LOUISE TELLS A STORY

The members of the board need not have concerned themselves in regard
to the waiting girls. Josie and Mary Louise had been fully occupied. At
the moment that the hubbub had arisen, marking the time when Dr. Weston
had made his announcement, there had been a sharp tap on the office
door. Josie had opened the door and there had entered a woman and two
children, a girl of eight and a boy of about six. The girl carried a
badly wrapped bundle of clothes.

Mary Louise and Josie felt a keen interest in all three. The woman was
young--under thirty. She was handsome, with raven black hair and
well-cut features. Her face was pale and her eyes gloomy. She carried
herself with a slow, lazy grace. The good lines of her tall figure
asserted themselves in spite of the cheap, ill-fitting serge suit.
Josie always noticed hands and feet, because she declared they were
more difficult to disguise than any other portion of one's anatomy. One
glance at the woman's ungloved hands made Josie wonder at the well-kept
nails and dimpled knuckles.

"No horny-handed daughter of toil, at least," was her mental note. She
then instinctively glanced at the woman's feet.

"Too well shod for the serge suit," was her verdict, "high arched
triple A with French heels, about a five, which is small for a person
of her height. She must be at least five feet, ten inches."

This inventory took Josie the fraction of a second, so quick was she to
see and pigeon-hole her observations in her well-ordered brain.

The children had evidently been crying. The girl's eyes and nose were
red and the boy at intervals gave a dry sob as though he had been
through a storm of weeping and could with difficulty stop. They clung
to each other as they would had they been drowning. The woman pushed
them into the room. The children's clothes were the worse for wear, and
untidy. Their faces were dirty and showed signs of grimy little
knuckles having been dug into streaming eyes. The eyes of both children
were blue, as blue as cornflowers, and their hair very light, the boy's
curling in tight rings but the girl's straight and bobbed.

"I want to see the manager," said the woman in a well-modulated voice.

"Dr. Weston will be here in