"Don't you like it? Sounds like a good, common-sense Scotch name to me. Not in the same class with Jean Norris or Patricia Farnsworth, but no doubt quite respectable in its way."
"Dr. Mary? My Dr. Mary!"
"Yours? What do you, married parasite, Bohemian newspaper woman, know about Dr. Mary?"
"More than you do."
And Jean related in detail her one visit to the Hill Neighborhood House.
"And you needn't think that you are going up there alone. I've been thinking about her and wanting to go terribly, but I let such a long time go by and then it seemed rather—oh, I don't know. I just haven't been."
"Well, we're going and we're going now. If I can't see Franklin right away, at least I can see her, and they're the two people I'm most excited about at the present moment. 'Phone your husband instantly and come along."
Jean got Herrick on the 'phone and astonished him more than he had been astonished for a long time by demanding that he come home to dinner and come early. She would give no reason but chuckled happily as he had not heard her chuckle for months.
Herrick went back and sat a long while at his desk without doing anything. Then he telephoned to Flop, whom he had met accidentally early in the afternoon, that he would not be able to help in the celebration of Magnolia's birthday, as he had promised. After which, he smiled and wrote five hundred words of very good editorial.