"Oh!" said Mrs. Richards for a third time, and in this instance her voice was warm with gratification.
Claire directed her attention to her plate of buttered toast and her cup of coffee. She was chagrined to think that she had fallen so easily into Mrs. Richards's very obvious traps. Not that it mattered. She was quite sure that the truth could not harm Stillman, and she was equally sure that her position in life was too obscure to stand out conspicuously against the darts of Mrs. Richards's vindictive tongue. But she had the pride of her reticences and she did not like to surrender these privileges at the point of insolent curiosity. The two continued to eat in silence.
It was Mrs. Richards who finished first, and she dipped her fingers hurriedly into the battered metal finger-bowl which the Japanese bus-boy thrust before her.
"Do you mind if I go along?" she inquired of Claire, with an air of polite triumph. "I think I'll go forward where I can get a quick start ... before the crowd gets too thick. I've got a million errands to do before nine o'clock. And I do want to run into the office before Gertie settles down to work. I haven't seen her for a week and I've got more things to tell her!"
CHAPTER VIII
"Why, Miss Claire, how could you! Where have you been? And your mother in such a bad way!" Mrs. Finnegan broke into sudden tears.
Claire, fumbling in her bag for the front-door key, looked up. Mrs. Finnegan had swung open the door to the Robson flat and she stood like a vision of disaster upon the threshold.
"What has happened?" Claire's voice rose with a note of swift apprehension.
"Your mother ... she's paralyzed! She was taken last night. The doctor says it would have happened, anyway. But I say it was worry, that's what it was. With you away all night and never a word!"