“Chair, boss?”
Another minute and we were seated side by side in the odd little vehicle—something between a baby’s perambulator and a touring-car—with the leather curtains buttoned to protect us, and a view through the wind-shield of a long line of lights shining into fog. There was a minute of surprise in the fact that, involuntarily expecting to go at a heightened speed, we found ourselves literally creeping at the snail’s pace which was the customary gait of our pusher.
But that was only subconscious. I took note of it without taking note of it, to remember it when I pieced the circumstances together on returning home. The one thing of which I was really aware was that in this curious conveyance I was seated at her side, and able, as she sat half turned toward me, to look her in the eyes.
Now that we were there, she lost some of her self-possession. After the months in which I had been afraid of her she seemed suddenly to have become afraid of me. Crouching back into her corner of the chair, she grew small and apologetic.
“Mother made me come. She said some one ought to tell you.”
It was like a little cry—the cry of a child confessing before it is accused. I could follow her mental action. She wanted me to understand that nothing but force majeure would have induced her to waylay a man as he was coming home from work and take him in a kind of ambush.
Having once already talked with her at cross-purposes, I was careful to let her state her message before betraying my conviction of what it was to be.
“It’s very kind of Mrs. Barry,” I began, vaguely.
“You see, she likes you,” she broke in, impulsively. “If you had any one belonging to you in this country I dare say she—But she’s awfully maternal, mother is; and when Annette told her—”
“What did Annette tell her?”