Hilda drove Ruth to her own house. "I've got to tell mother I'm going to stay with you," she said. "Will you come in?"
"No—please," Ruth answered.
"I won't be but a jiffy, then." And Hilda left Ruth alone in the electric. Alone! Suddenly Ruth was afraid of being alone. She was thankful for Hilda, thankful Hilda was going to see her through.
Hilda's father and mother were in the library.
"Thought you were going some place with Bonbright and his wife," said
Malcolm Lightener.
"Dad," said Hilda, with characteristic bluntness and lack of preface, "they're in a dickens of a mess."
"Bonbright?"
"And Ruth."
"Huh!…" Lightener's grunt seemed to say that it was nothing but what he expected. "Well—go ahead."
Hilda went ahead. Her father punctuated her story with sundry grunts, her mother with exclamations of astonishment and sorrow. Hilda told the whole story from the beginning, and when she was done she said: "There it is. You wouldn't believe it. And, dad, Bonbright Foote's an angel. A regular angel with wings."