Philip had been too busy to come to her aid. They had exchanged notes. She had addressed him at the Fabians', and he had replied that he had taken a room, and asked that his belongings be stacked up somewhere. He promised that he would come for them early Sunday afternoon.
So now she was waiting, her capable hands folded in her black alpaca lap, and her face expressing endurance.
"I'm countin' the hours, Pluto," she declared. "This place is misery to me now. I feel just as much in a strange garret as you do in that basket. I just wish Mr. Sidney'd come and take his things and then there won't be much more daylight to look around here in. And I hope you won't act like all possessed when we start for the train nor when we get on it."
"Meow!" cried Pluto, exasperated.
"There now!" exclaimed Eliza, in trepidation—"you do that just once when the train's standin' still, and where'll we be! I've always thought you had a little more intelligence than the law allows; and if you go to actin' like an alley cat you'll disappoint me dreadfully!"
Eliza rose anxiously and threw herself on her knees beside the basket and opened it. Pluto sprang out, and she caught him and pressed her thin cheek against his fur in a rare caress. Her eyes stung in her effort to repress tears.
"Oh, law! I'm sick o' myself," she muttered. "Cryin'! cryin'! gracious, what a fool! I'd ought to sold you to somebody, I suppose,"—she clung tighter to the handsome creature and buried her eyes in his glossy coat,—"or given you away, more likely. Who'd want to pay anything for a cat that don't know how bothersome it's goin' to be to get the right train, and hasn't the decency to keep his mouth shut, and—Oh!" as a knock sounded on the door. "There he is now."
The glow of Eliza's one interview with Mrs. Ballard's heir had faded long ago. The sordid and wounding events of the week had eclipsed whatever cheer he had brought her, and it was only as one of the events of her flitting that she looked forward to his advent this afternoon, and the departure of the last and most intimate of her dear one's possessions.
The knock on the door preceded its immediate opening.
"May I come in?"