"It is quite unnecessary, Miss--Aubrey-Blythe," Mrs. Potts assured her, with an unpleasant smile. "You are not, I am sure, a suitable person for the situation. Good morning."
Jane wept a little when she confided this last failure to Bertha Forbes's sympathizing ear. "I couldn't tell that woman what Aunt Agatha said to me about Mr. Towle; now, could I?"
"She wouldn't have believed it, if you had," said Miss Forbes gruffly. "Better try another tack," she added, still more gruffly. "Better yet, go back to your uncle. He can't be a bad sort, from what you tell me."
"Uncle Robert? Oh, no! he is--he has never been unkind to me. I--I quite love Uncle Robert; that is to say, I should love to love him, if he would let me."
"Then you'll go back to England like a sensible girl; tell your uncle you've made a fool of yourself, but you'll try not to do it again. Think it over till to-morrow morning, and remember I'll take care of the transportation."
Jane reflected upon this eminently sane proposition over night; then she faced her new-found friend and advisor with a pale but determined face. "Thank you for offering to pay my passage back to England," she said, "but I really can't accept it. I couldn't face Aunt Agatha and Gwendolen and--and the others. I'd rather scrub floors than to do that! Perhaps I'll have to scrub in the end, for my money is almost gone."
Bertha Forbes stared at the girl speculatively. "If you will tell them at the employment agency that you're willing to do house work, you'll soon find a place," she said; "there are plenty of people who will hire you to work in their houses, and ask few questions about your past. But it's no fun to scrub floors, my young friend, unless the floors happen to be your own. I never tried _that_ myself; but I've seen deluded young women who seemed to think it a vastly agreeable pastime, if there was only a young man in the case."
And this is how it came about that Miss Jane Evelyn Aubrey-Blythe--just two weeks from the time she informed the invisible forces of the universe that things would have to change--found herself humbly seeking entrance at the side door of a modest, detached villa, situated in a modest, detached suburb of New York. "Things" had changed, indeed!