Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/71

Rh The very next morning, surreptitiously Reba wrote a very careful little note on her light-blue note-paper, with the gold filigreed J in one corner, to inquire if there was a single room she could occupy for a few weeks during February or March. And after she mailed this small, sealed blue bomb at the Ridgefield post-office, she approached the little brick temple of the Ridgefield Trust Company and, with pounding heart, and knees that trembled, entered it.

Reba knew that she had some money of her own, somewhere. Ever since she had become of legal age, her father had been in the habit of bringing her papers to sign occasionally, which she always did, without annoying him with questions. It irritated him to be questioned. Besides, she had all the spending-money she needed, which he gave to her gruffly whenever she asked for it, which wasn't often. Money had been of little use to Reba in her pursuit of self-abnegation.

She was painfully ill at ease when at last she found herself facing Mr. James Perkins, the president of the Ridgefield Trust Company, and one of the members of the Standing Committee at the Congregational Church.

"How do you do?" she murmured primly.

"How-do-you-do, how-do-you-do, how-do-you-do," Mr. Perkins replied effusively three times, and shoved up a chair and asked her to be seated.

Reba accepted the extreme edge of the chair, and somehow got out the explanation of her call at last. She thought perhaps she ought to know—being over eighteen, and all that—if there was money of hers down here at the bank, and in case she should ever