"Quick!" cried Steve.
He picked up the White Hope, closed the door, and ran.
Chapter X
Accepting the Gifts of the Gods
It was fortunate, considering the magnitude of the shock which she was
to receive, that circumstances had given Steve's Mamie unusual powers
of resistance in the matter of shocks. For years before her
introduction into the home of the Winfield family her life had been one
long series of crises. She had never known what the morrow might bring
forth, though experience had convinced her that it was pretty certain
to bring forth something agitating which would call for all her
well-known ability to handle disaster.
The sole care of three small brothers and a weak-minded father gives a
girl exceptional opportunities of cultivating poise under difficult
conditions. It had become second nature with Mamie to keep her head
though the heavens fell.
Consequently, when she entered the nursery next morning and found it
empty, she did not go into hysterics. She did not even scream. She read
Steve's note twice very carefully, then sat down to think what was her
best plan of action.
Her ingrained habit of looking on the bright side of things, the result
of a life which, had pessimism been allowed to rule it, might have
ended prematurely with what the papers are fond of calling a "rash
act," led her to consider first those points in the situation which she
labelled in her meditations as "bits of luck.
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