"Oh, might he?" Skeet Thornhill had hurried out from the drugstore, a package of medicine in her hand. Her eyes looked as though she'd been crying; they flashed a hostile glance over the new brother-in-law, excellently groomed, the big flower favor on his coat, the tall, beautiful sister, all frilly white and flower festival fashion.
"If Worth's proved innocent!" she flung at them. "Bronse Vandeman, you've got a word too many in when you say that."
"Just a tongue-slip, Skeeter," Vandeman apologized. "I hope the boy'll come through all right—same as you do."
"You don't do anything about it the same as I do!" Skeet came back. "I'd be ashamed to 'hope' for a friend to be cleared of a charge like that. If I couldn't know he was clear—clear all the time—I'd try to forget about it."
"See here, Skeet," Ina obviously restrained herself, "that's what we're all trying to do for Worth: forget about it—make nothing of it—act exactly as if it'd never happened. You ought to come on out to the ball with the other girls. You're just staying away because Barbara Wallace is."
"I'm not. Some damn fool went and told mother about Worth being arrested, and made her a lot worse. She's almost crazy. I'd be afraid to leave her alone with old Jane. You get me and this medicine up home—or shall I go around to Capehart's and have Barbie drive me?"
"I'll take you, Skeeter," Vandeman said. "We're through here. We're for home to dress, then to the country club—and not leave it again till morning. That ball out there has got to be made the biggest thing Santa Ysobel ever saw—regardless. Come on." The crowd swallowed them up.
Making for the Fremont House, I passed Dr. Bowman's stairway, and on impulse turned, ran up. I found the doctor packing, very snappish, very sorry for himself. He was leaving next day for a position in the state hospital for the insane at Sefton. His kind have to blow off to somebody; I was it, though he must have known I had no sympathy to offer. The hang-over of last night's drunk made emotional the tone in which he said,
"After all, a man's wife makes or breaks him. Mine's broken me. I could have had a fine position at the Mountain View Sanitarium, well paid, among cultured people, if she'd held up her damned divorce suit a little longer."
"And as it is, you have to put up with what Cummings can land you with such pull as he has."