Young Mrs. O'Connor began silently, bitterly, to cry. Susan went to sit beside her, and put a comforting arm about her.
"I have looked forward to my girls' wedding days," said Mrs. Lancaster, "with such feelings of joy! How could I anticipate that my own daughter, secretly, could contract a marriage with a man whose mother--" Her tone, low at first, rose so suddenly and so passionately that she was unable to control it. The veins about her forehead swelled.
"Ma!" said Mary Lou, "you only lower yourself to her level!"
"Do you mean that she won't let him bring Georgie there?" asked Susan.
"Whether she would or not," Mrs. Lancaster answered, with admirable loftiness, "she will not have a chance to insult my daughter. Joe, I pity!" she added majestically. "He fell deeply and passionately in love--"
"With Loretta," supplied Susan, innocently.
"He never cared for Loretta!" her aunt said positively. "No. With Georgie. And, not being a gentleman, we could hardly expect him to act like one! But we'll say no more about it. It will all be over in a few days, and then we'll try to forget it!"
Poor Georgie, it was but a sorry romance! Joe telephoned, Joe called, Father Birch came, the affair hung fire. Georgie was neither married nor free. Dr. O'Connor would not desert his mother, his mother refused to accept Georgie. Georgie cried day and night, merely asseverating that she hated Joe, and loved Ma, and she wished people would let her alone.
These were not very cheerful days in the boarding-house. Billy Oliver was worried and depressed, very unlike himself. He had been recently promoted to the post of foreman, was beginning to be a power among the men who associated with him and, as his natural instinct for leadership asserted itself, he found himself attracting some attention from the authorities themselves. He was questioned about the men, about their attitude toward this regulation or that superintendent. It was hinted that the spreading of heresies among the laborers was to be promptly discouraged. The men were not to be invited to express themselves as to hours, pay and the advantages of unifying. In other words, Mr. William Oliver, unless he became a little less interested and less active in the wrongs and rights of his fellow-men in the iron-works, might be surprised by a request to carry himself and his public sentiments elsewhere.
Susan, in her turn, was a little disturbed by the rumor that Front Office was soon to be abolished; begun for a whim, it might easily be ended for another whim. For herself she did not very much care; a certain confidence in the future was characteristic of her, but she found herself wondering what would become of the other girls, Miss Sherman and Miss Murray and Miss Cottle.