“Yes, Peter, I understand,” I told him. “Please come and get me!” And again the silence was so prolonged that I had to cut in and ask: “Are you there?”
And Peter’s voice answered “Yes.”
“Then you’ll come?” I exacted, determined to burn all my bridges behind me.
“I’ll be there on Monday,” said Peter, with quiet decision. “I’ll be there with Tithonus and Tumble-Weed and the old prairie-schooner. And we’ll all trek home together!”
“Skookum!” I said with altogether unbecoming levity.
I patted the telephone instrument as I hung up the receiver. Then I sat staring at it in a brown study. 361
Then I went careening up-stairs and woke Poppsy out of a sound sleep and hugged her until her bones were ready to crack and told her that our Dinkie had been found again. And Poppsy, not being quite able to get it through her sleepy little head, promptly began to bawl. But there was little to bawl over, once she was thoroughly awake. And then I went careening down to the telephone again, and called up Lossie’s boarding-house, and had her landlady root the poor girl out of bed, and heard her break down and have a little cry when I told her our Dinkie had been found. And the first thing she asked me, when she was able to talk again, was if Gershom Binks had been told of the good news. And I had to acknowledge that I hadn’t even thought of poor old Gershom, but that Peter Ketley would surely have passed the good word on to Casa Grande, for Peter always seemed to think of the right thing.
And then I remembered about Duncan. For Duncan, whatever he may have been, was still the boy’s father. And he must be told. It was my duty to tell him. So once more I climbed the stairs, but this time more slowly. I had to wait a full minute before I found the courage, I don’t know why, to knock on Duncan’s bedroom door. 362
I knocked twice before any answer came.
“What is it?” asked the familiar sleepy bass—and I realized what gulfs yawned between us when my husband on one side of that closed door could be lying lost in slumber and I on the other side of it could find life doing such unparalleled things to me. I felt for him as a girl home, tired from her first dance, feels for a young brother asleep beside a Noah’s Ark.