The Other Girls | Page 9

hat with an air
of taking credit to himself, as she glanced at him; and another, in a
sober old gray suit, with only a black ribbon knotted under his linen
collar, turned slightly the other way as she approached, and with
something like a frown between his brows, looked out of the window at
a wood-pile.

Marion's cheeks were a tint brighter, and her white teeth seemed to
flash out a yet more determined smile, as, passing him by, she seated
herself with friendly bustle among some girls a little behind him.
"In again, Marion?" said one. "I thought you'd left."
"Only in for a transient," said Marion, with a certain clear tone that
reminded one of the stage-trainer's direction to "speak to the galleries."
"Nellie Burton is sick, and Lufton sent for me. I'll do for a month or so,
and like it pretty well; then I shall have a tiff, I suppose, and fling it up
again; I can't stand being ordered round longer than that."
"Or longer than the new lasts," said the other slyly, touching the
drapery sleeve of the zephyrine. "It is awful pretty, Marry!"
"Yes, and while the new lasts Lufton'll be awful polite," returned
Marion. "He likes to see his girls look stylish, I can tell you. When
things begin to shab out, then the snubbing begins. And how they're
going to help shabbing out I should like to know, dragging round
amongst the goods and polishing against the counters? and who's going
to afford ready-made, or pay for sewing, out of six dollars a week and
cars and dinners, let alone regular board, that some of 'em have to take
off? Why there isn't enough left for shoes! No wonder Lufton's always
changing. Well--there's one good of it! You can always get a temporary
there. Save up a month and then put into port and refit. That's the way I
do."
"But what does it come to, after all's said and done? and what if you
hadn't the port?" asked Hannah Upshaw, the girl with the shawl on,
who never wore suits.
Marion Kent shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know, yet. I take things as they come to me. I don't pretend to
calculate for anybody else. I know one thing, though, there is other
things to be done,--and it isn't sewing-machines either, if you can once
get started. And when I can see my way clear, I mean to start. See if I
don't!"

The train stopped at the Pomantic station. The young man in the gray
clothes rose up, took something from under the car-seat and went out.
What he had with him was a carpenter's box. It was the same youth
who had greeted Ray Ingraham from beneath the elm branches. As the
train got slowly under way again, Marion looked straight out at her
window into Frank Sunderline's face, and bowed,--very modestly and
sweetly bowed. He was waiting for that instant on the platform, until
the track should be clear and he could cross.
What he caught in Marion's look, as she turned it full upon him,
nobody could see; but there was a quieter earnest in it, certainly, when
she turned back; and the young man had responded to her salutation
with a relaxing glance of friendly pleasantness that seemed more native
to his face than the frown of a few minutes before.
Marion Kent had several selves; several relations, at any rate, into
which she could put herself with others. I think she showed young
Sunderline, for that instant, out of gentler, questioning, almost
beseeching eyes, a something she could not show to the whole car-full
with whom at the moment of her entrance she had been in rapport,
through frills and puffs and flutters, into which she had allowed her
consciousness to pass. Behind the little window he could only see a
face; a face quieted down from its gay flippancy; a face that showed
itself purposely and simply to him; eyes that said, "What was that you
thought of me just now? _Don't_ think it!"
They were old neighbors and child-friends. They had grown up
together; had they been growing away from each other in some things
since they had been older? Often it appeared so; but it was Marion
chiefly who seemed to change; then, all at once, in some unspoken and
intangible way, for a moment like this, she seemed to come suddenly
back again, or he seemed to catch a glimpse of that in her, hidden, not
altered, which might come back one of these days. Was it a glimpse,
perhaps, like the sight the Lord has of each one of us, always?
Meanwhile, what of Ray Ingraham?
Ray Ingraham was sweet, and proper, and still; just what Frank

Sunderline thought was prettiest