always to be seen with her stepmother, both clad in the depressingly sombre blacks of sorrow which custom demanded. Mimi’s oval, cream-coloured face topped by its aureole of reddish gold peeped out with startling beauty from the black bonnet tied under her chin with strings of the same colour. Mrs. Daquin did not fare so well in her melancholy raiment, her brown skin and hair offering not so marked a contrast as in Mimi’s case. She suffered the loss of comeliness cheerfully, however, for its added advantages in sympathetic attention.
Careless as usual of material things, they found Jean had not made a will. Mr. Hunter had volunteered to relieve them of the burdens of settling the estate and his report had shown that not much had been left. Jean had not secured the full value of his property in New Orleans and the cash he had secured had been invested largely in purchasing stock in the Lincoln Mutual Insurance Company. This would in time prove a sound investment, but at present there was little return from it. The deeds to the house given them by Mr. Robertson had been made out in Mrs. Daquin’s name. Mr. Robertson volunteered to contribute a definite sum each month to their support when he saw that his daughter had no intentions of returning to Chicago as he wished. Mimi, trained to do no work which would bring her appreciable income or which she could have accepted without lowering their social status, found herself faced with the Hobson’s choice of teaching school or enduring the loss of many little comforts and even a few necessities which before had seemed to her so natural she had never given thought to their source. She did not grumble but began at once to prepare for the examination as a schoolteacher in the spring. In fact, she was glad to find a definite thing on which to concentrate—it served as an opiate when Jean’s loss seemed too great to bear. …
Into this new life Carl came with much larger importance than Mimi had supposed was possible. In time Mrs. Daquin, who had never been able to find out from Mimi the purpose of Mrs. Hunter’s mysterious call