But when I
saw the face itself I stopped short, giving Evan's arm such a tug that he
also turned.
The woman was Jennie, the Oakland baker's only daughter, who had no lack
of country beaus, but was flattered by the attentions of one of the
Jenks-Smith's butlers, whose irreproachable manners of the
count-in-disguise variety made the native youths appear indeed uncouth.
She grew discontented, thought it beneath her social position to help her
mother in the shop, and went to town to work in a store, it was said
until her wedding, which was to be that autumn. Father worried over her
and tried to advise, but to no purpose. This was more than two years ago.
The butler left the Jenks-Smith's, and we heard that he was a married
man, with a family who had come to look him up.
Jennie's mother said she had a fine place in a store, and showed us, from
time to time, presents the girl had sent her, so thus to find the truth
was a shock indeed. Not but what all women who are grown must bear upon
them the weight of the general knowledge of evil, but it is none the
less awful to come face to face on a street corner with one who was the
pretty village girl, whom you last saw standing behind the neat counter
with a pitcher of honeysuckles at her elbow as she filled a bag with
sugar cookies for your clamouring babies.
* * * * *
I suppose that I must have exclaimed aloud, for Jennie started back and
saw us, then dropped her bag and began to grope about for it as if she
was in a dream.
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