"She's in the dining-room," Beth said. "This evening it's her shorthand; she's expanding her notes."
"And she wouldn't want to see me?"
"She needs company."
He looked at her, trying to read her meaning; she smiled and tossed her head. "Beth is beginning to look better," he thought, and remembered that she had never asked him for news of Jim. Then her expression changed as a step was heard in the hall; it was Pease coming, plantigrade and slow. "Is that it?" thought Mather.
"I think I'll go and see Judith," he said, and passed Pease at the door.
Judith was in the dining-room, bending over her note-book. Scattered sheets lay on the table before her; her hair had in places escaped from its confinement and strayed over forehead and nape. He saw the fatigue in her eyes as she raised them.
"I'm all mixed up," she said.
He drew up a chair and sat down. "So I should think. How any one reads shorthand I don't see." He took the note-book. "It seems well done."
"Sometimes I write it correctly," she said, "and then can't read it. Sometimes I could read it if I had only written it right. To-day the man read very fast, on purpose, and I lost some of it."