SON OF THE WIND
tions and agreements involved in such business, they knew each other well enough to argue important points.
He found she had a keen eye for necessities, for adjustments that were convenient. She displayed an enthusiasm for both that amounted to a passion. These things were beautiful to her, as her daughter had said. It was amusing to watch how the two women worked together. Evidently they understood each other to the flicker of an eyelash. It was Mrs. Rader who knew whether the windows were clean and if the woodwork needed washing, but it was Blanche who saw that the blue rugs went into the room with the blue furniture, that the mirrors were in the right light, that the curtains were even. She was as ready to blacken her hands and dive into dusty closets as Mrs. Rader, but the faculty for arrangement of effect was stronger in her. She did it better. She accepted his services with a promptitude and ordered him about with a grace that commended itself. Yet she waited on him too, at moments; she brought him his implements. She watched him.
He became to both women a person to be appealed to, called to from a distance, commanded on the instant. He grew used to seeing the girl's face with perhaps a smut on the lovely arch of her forehead,
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