A SERIOUS MATCHMAKER.
When Marion alighted from her train at the Grand Central Depot it was
almost midnight, but she was not frightened a particle.
“It doesn’t seem much like the first time I came,” she said to the
gentleman and lady who sat just behind her and who had been talking to
her pleasantly during the last part of the journey.
“How so?” asked the gentleman, with an interested look.
“Why, I was as green as grass,” said Marion, laughing. “I had on a
homespun frock and a simple little straw hat, and it was my very first
glimpse of a real city. You can’t imagine how lonesome I felt. And
then, do you know, I did not have a friend to meet me, while to-night
my sister will be here as well as a dear friend who lives with us.”
“Do tell us your name,” said the lady, as they walked slowly down the
platform in the long line of passengers.
“Marion Marlowe,” said the young girl, promptly, “and here is my
address,” she said, handing her a slip of paper; “but after Monday
I shall be on Blackwell’s Island. I am going there as a nurse—‘on
probation,’ of course—at Charity Hospital.”
“Then I may see you again, because I go there often,” said the lady,
quickly. “My name is Mrs. Brookes, and I am a member of a mission that
visits the Island regularly.”
“And as I am to be a physician, I may see you, too,” said the
gentleman, smiling. “I am Reginald Brookes, a student at the ‘P. and
S.’ This lady is my mother, and at present I am a bachelor.”
Both ladies laughed, and they all shook hands.
The next moment Marion spied Dollie and her friend, Miss Allyn, and the
three girls were soon together.
“Oh, we’ve found the cunningest little flat you ever saw, Marion,” said
Dollie, as the girls were disrobing in their room a little later, “and
Miss Allyn and I are to keep house together, and there’s to be a bed
for you whenever you can get away from the Island.”
“It’s a hard place to get away from,” said Miss Allyn, smiling; “but as
you are only to go up for three months, Marion, I suppose there’s some
use in keeping a bed for you.”
“Oh, I hope I’ll stay longer than that,” laughed Marion. “Why, I’d
hate to be sent away when my probationary term was over. I’d almost be
tempted to commit some crime that would send me back——”
Miss Allyn was a newspaper reporter who had been their dearest friend
ever since the girls began their search for work in the big city. She
was not as beautiful as the two country girls, but she made up in
wisdom what she lacked in beauty.
“You are our encyclopedia, directory, almanac and family guide,” Marion
had told her, but Miss Allyn was too modest to admit her worth. She
was one of the few who could do favors without becoming obtrusively
patronizing. Dollie Marlowe was eager to hear about her sister’s visit
to their parents, and her blue eyes filled with tears as Marion told
them all about it, for in spite of her father’s hardness, and her
mother’s weakness, she was still their child and loved her parents
dearly.
When Marion told them of poor Sallie, Dollie was terribly grieved. She
sympathized so deeply with the girl that she became almost hysterical.
“I suppose that is exactly the way Sile would have treated me if I had
married him,” she cried, with her blue eyes blazing. “Oh, Marion, if
Sallie had only had a sister like you, she would never have been weak
enough to marry Silas!”
“Sallie was a poor, foolish girl,” said Marion, sadly, “and for that
very reason Silas abuses her now.”
“I think a girl is a fool to marry a man she doesn’t love,” said Miss
Allyn, sharply, “particularly when he has no money and she doesn’t even
respect him!”
“So do I,” said Marion, stoutly, “but Sallie did not know any better.
She’s just like dozens of other women—she has never done any thinking.
Why, Alma, some of the women in the country are a different order of
beings from you city women. They think that marrying is the only end
and aim of existence.”
“Poor things! I pity them, and I despise them, too,” said Miss Allyn,
sadly. “There is no excuse for such reasoning at this stage of the
world’s progress. There are so many fields of usefulness for a woman
to-day.”
“Well, I am glad that Dollie and I are safely out of the rut,” said
Marion, thankfully. “We’ve got a chance to develop and see something of
the world before we marry and settle down.”
“Oh, but I’m going to marry some day,” said Dollie, merrily, as she
clambered into bed and placed her pretty plump arms above her head.
“Ralph says he won’t wait very long after he is able to support me.”
“I’ll have to scold Ralph a little,” said Marion, pinching her sister’s
dimpled arm as it lay on the pillow. “He must not be in such a hurry to
rob me of my sister, not that I blame him a bit, do you?” she added,
laughing.
“Not a bit,” said Miss Allyn, quickly. “I’m half in love with her
myself. Still, I’d rather she’d marry a millionaire, and she could do
it just as easily. Ralph Moore is all right, but he’s too poor for
Dollie.”
“Oh, Miss Allyn!” cried both girls in half serious horror. “Who ever
would have dreamed of you harboring such sentiments?”
“Well, I’ve got ’em, and I might as well be honest,” was the answer.
“Dollie’s too pretty to have to spend her life in a poor man’s home. I
want to see diamonds in her golden hair and fine lace on those white
shoulders, and I don’t see why she can’t love a rich man as well as a
poor one.”
“If she could it would be all right, and I would agree with you,” said
Marion, thoughtfully.
“Well, I’ll never love any one but Ralph,” said Dollie, stoutly, “and I
don’t care if he is poor. It just makes me love him still the harder.”
“You are a brave little kitten,” said Marion, smoothing the golden
hair, “but what is it, Alma, you look so terribly serious?”
Miss Allyn was just raising her hand to turn off the gas for the girls
before going to her own room, but she waited long enough to make a
candid statement.
“I know a young man that would make a lovely husband for one of you
girls,” she said, slowly. “He’s an only child, and he’s as rich as
Crœsus.”
“Who is he?” asked Marion, half rising on her pillow.
Miss Allyn turned off the gas before she answered.
“His name is Reginald Brookes, and he is a medical student. He’s
exactly the kind of a man you should marry.”