It was almost half-past six when the door opened suddenly, and a large woman came in.
"Well, hello, little girlie!" said the newcomer, panting from the climb upstairs, and turning a cold, fresh-colored cheek for Susan's kiss. She took off a long coat, displaying beneath, a black walking- skirt, an elaborate high collar, and a view of shabby corset and shabby corset-cover between. "Ma wanted butter," she explained, with a pleasant, rueful smile, "and I just slipped into anything to go for it!"
"You're an angel, Mary Lou," Susan said affectionately.
"Oh, angel!" Miss Lancaster laughed wearily, but she liked the compliment for all that. "I'm not much of an angel," she said with a sigh, throwing her hat and coat down beside Susan's, and assuming a somewhat spotted serge skirt, and a limp silk waist a trifle too small for her generous proportions. Susan watched her in silence, while she vigorously jerked the little waist this way and that, pinning its torn edges down firmly, adjusting her skirt over it, and covering the safety-pin that united them with a cracked patent- leather belt.
"There!" said Mary Lou, "that doesn't look very well, but I guess it'll do. I have to serve to-night, and I will not wear my best skirt into the kitchen. Ready to go down?"
Susan flung her book down, yawned.
"I ought to do my hair--" she began.
"Oh, you look all right," her cousin assured her, "I wouldn't bother."
She took a small paper bag full of candy from her shopping bag and tucked it out of sight in a bureau drawer. "Here's a little sweet bite for you and me, Sue," said she, with childish, sweet slyness, "when Jinny and Ma go to the lecture to-night, we'll have OUR little party, too. Just a little secret between you and me."
They went downstairs with their arms about each other, to the big front dining-room in the basement. The lower hall was dark and draughty, and smelled of boiling vegetables. There was a telephone on a little table, close by the dining-room door, and a slender, pretty young woman was seated before it. She put her hand over the transmitter, as they came downstairs, and said in a smiling whisper, "Hello, darling!" to Susan. "Shut the door," she added, very low, "when you go into the dining-room."
Susan nodded, and Georgianna Lancaster returned at once to her telephoned conversation.
"Yes, you did!" said she, satirically, "I believe that! ... Oh, of course you did! ... And I suppose you wrote me a note, too, only I didn't get it. Now, listen, why don't you say that you forgot all about it, I wouldn't care ... Honestly, I wouldn't ... honestly, I wouldn't ... Yes, I've heard that before ... No, he didn't either, Rose was furious. ... No, I wasn't furious at all, but at the same time I didn't think it was a very gentlemanly way to act, on your part ..."