CHAPTER IV
JOSIE DONS A HENNA WIG
"Believe me, there's something shady about that woman!" said Josie to Mary Louise. "She was ready enough to leave the kids until Dr. Weston told her she would have to produce some kind of information about them. That is what scared her off."
"Dear little children," said Mary Louise sadly. "I wonder if she is their mother."
"Of course not! There wasn't a trace of resemblance."
"I know she was a decided brunette and the children were blue-eyed and tow-headed," Mary Louise remembered.
"Color isn't such a proof as line and certain tricks of pose and motion. They had not one single thing in common with the woman and then she was plainly indifferent to them and they were a little in awe of her. That happens sometimes with a mother, but if she is indifferent to her children she usually tries to hide it and makes a show of affection with strangers. And children just have to love their mothers a little bit and it was easy to see those poor kiddies actually hated her. I watched the girl, Polly, and when the woman told the boy to stop bawling Polly had a look in her blue eyes that suggested a desire to bite and scratch and kick or even use a hatchet if one were handy. I think I'll look those people up."
"But how, Josie?"
"There are ways," smiled Josie. "You see, I am kind of self-elected detective for the Children's Home Society and my work has begun already. It is not merely to look after the children in the home but those who might, could, would or should be in the home."
"Well, I hope you can find out something. I'd like to know about my poor little Peter. What a precious boy he is!"
That forenoon Josie happened, as if by chance, into the department store of Temple & Sweet's. First she gave a cursory glance at the bargain counters where georgette blouses were being tossed about by eager shoppers like corks on the restless sea. She then looked in at the shoe department. Seeing nothing there to interest her she made her way to a lunch counter in the basement and satisfied her healthy appetite with a club sandwich and a cup of chocolate. All the time she kept her eye on the shoppers who passed back and forth. After her luncheon she again visited the pile of rumpled blouses, much diminished, and again made her way to the shoe department. Evidently she saw something there that interested her keenly. She hurried to the dressing room and in a moment emerged looking strangely unlike the Josie her friends knew. Her sandy hair was completely covered by a henna wig, bobbed and crimped. Her sedate sailor hat was cocked at a rakish angle and draped with a much-ornamented veil, and mirabile dictu! a lipstick had been freely and relentlessly applied to her honest mouth and her cheeks were touched up with a paint of purplish hue. Her sober Norfolk jacket was as much disguised as its wearer by a silly lace frill pinned around the neck and down the front.
Back to the shoe department Josie hurried and flopped herself down by a young woman who was busily engaged in trying on several styles of bargain pumps. Her slender, high-arched foot was just the kind for the shoes advertised as greatly reduced. It was the woman of the morning, but she, too, was much changed—so much so that Josie herself might not have recognized her had she not been looking for and expecting a change. The dress she wore was no longer a cheap blue serge but a handsome tricolette, richly trimmed according to the prevailing mode. Her hat was plainly a Paris model in strong contrast to the battered, flower-trimmed thing she had worn in the morning. She also had been using a lip-stick and an extra touch of color was on her cheeks.
"Such sweet shoes!" ventured Josie in a mincing tone quite in keeping with her henna wig and lace ruffle. "My, you have a pretty arch!"
The young woman smiled encouragement, while the admiring shoe clerk tried on a smart brown suede pump.
"I have been trying to get my arch up," continued Josie, sticking out her own well-shod little foot. Josie had very pretty feet and they were one weakness. She always wore a sensible shoe, but it must be of the best material and nobby cut.
"What do you advise?" she asked the clerk. "But maybe you can tell me," she said, addressing the young woman by her side. "Your foot is so wonderful."
The woman was evidently pleased and flattered.
"Oh, thanks awfully," she drawled.
"I wonder if you dance much," continued Josie. "I bet you could do barefoot dancing with such a foot as that. Now could you? Ain't her foot a wonder?" to the clerk.
"I never saw a prettier," was his verdict.
"Well, I do dance," she confessed. "In fact, dancing is my profession. I'm not working right now but expect to get back on the road immediately."
"How thrilling!" cried Josie. Josie's intimates had often wondered at her histrionic powers when she pretended to be stupid, which was her usual way of disarming persons who might have been suspicious of her. She had found out much about those archvillains Felix and Hortense Markle by an assumption of supreme dullness. But no one of her acquaintances had ever seen Josie assume the role of a skittish, dressed-up miss, painted and brazen, talkative and impertinent.
"I'm just dying to go on the stage," she continued. "I get awful tired of pounding out a living on the typewriter. I'd a sight rather make a living with my toes than with my fingers."
The young woman bought the brown suede pumps and also a pair of black ones similar to them. She had already selected several pairs of oxfords and walking boots.
"You have to be mighty particular with your feet when you have to show them," she said, Josie's expansiveness having had its influence on her indifference. "I never can wear old shoes. They are simply ruination to one's feet. As for cheap shoes—never! Of course, these are bargains merely because they are a bit shop-worn."
"Shall I send these, lady?" asked the clerk.
"Ye-es—No! I had better take them with me. Wrap them up in as small a package as possible."
Josie noticed a fat roll of greenbacks as the woman paid for her purchases. Then, the large package under her arm, she walked off with a slow, lazy, long-limbed grace. In spite of the conversation she had held with Josie and the clerk she neglected any word of farewell.
"What can I show you, miss?" the clerk asked Josie.
"Nothing today, thank you! I reckon I'm due at my job. I'll be in another day. Good-by!" and Josie was off on her quest. She followed the woman from a safe distance up one street for several blocks and around a corner. She went in the front door of a cheap boarding house not far from the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop. From the fact that she did not ring the bell, but merely walked in, Josie gathered that there she was making her temporary home. The place was frankly third-class, with a large sign stating that boarders were wanted by the day or week. On the porch were young women coifed according to the latest and most extreme bushiness and young men with their feet on the railing, socks and toothpicks much in evidence.
Josie noted the address: 126 East Centre Street. She also noted the odors that exuded from the basement dining room.
"A veritable Todgers'," she said to herself. Dickens was Josie's favorite author and she could usually find a parallel from him to suit every case. "All the greens that were ever cooked there were evergreens and flourished in immortal strength," she quoted. "A funny hole for my lady of the high arches to choose to live in. And those kiddies—who and why are they? Anyhow, I'm going to keep my eye on the bunch of them."
Josie reported what she had discovered to Mary Louise, who was duly impressed by her friend's cleverness.
"Not a bit of it," said Josie, repudiating anything more than just an ordinary amount of knowledge of human nature. "I saw from the woman's shoes that she thought something of her feet and the way she walked and those very feet made me feel somehow she was accustomed walking on the stage. I told her about the sale at Temple & Sweet's, feeling almost sure the lure of bargain shoes would prove strong. There she was to be sure and she had a big wad of money, which makes me think she is doing those little kids dirt, not to have them better dressed. They were not even clean and so ragged it was pathetic. They are more folksy than she is, too. Something about their accent made me feel it. She had a well-modulated voice, but that is because she is evidently an actress as well as dancer; but there is something in her mode of speech that made me feel she was not exactly the same class as the children with her. She is some 'beaut,' though. You should see her in her glad rags."
Mary Louise spent a busy afternoon with her lawyer, Mr. Peter Conant, going over her affairs and having him look into the necessary deeds for the transfer of her old house to the Children's Home Society.
"And what does your young husband say to all of this giving away of good money and land?" asked Uncle Peter.
"Danny thinks it is exactly as it should be. He takes a kind of pride in being able to support me himself and he didn't have any too soft and easy a childhood, so he is anxious to help some little ones to happiness."
"Well, he is a good lad, a good lad," said Uncle Peter, "and I wish Jim Hathaway could have done something like this in his lifetime, but he was too busy trying to lay up treasures for you, my dear."
"I think sometimes he knew I'd do it and he was so unselfish he wanted me to have all the fun of it instead of having it himself. I am not depriving myself of anything to speak of. We have plenty left to buy us a nice little home and a large amount to spare besides, and Danny is making a very good salary." And Mary Louise hurried off to be home in time to see that the little new maid had everything in the way of food exactly right for her beloved young husband.