"Well, then," said Lottie. "I shouldn't say 'swell' nor 'ain't'."
Jeannette thought a moment. "The—houses—around—here—are—grand—are—they—not?"
Suddenly Lottie reached over and covered the girl's hand with her own.
Jeannette smiled back at her. She thought her a fine looking middle-aged person. Not a very swell dresser but you could see she had class.
"Here we are!" said Lottie aloud. The direct, clear-headed woman who had acted with authority and initiative only an hour before in the court room was now thinking, "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" in anticipative agony. She stepped out of the electric. "Gussie'll be glad."
"Yeh—Gussie!" Jeannette's tone was not without venom. "She's her own boss. She's got it good. Sometimes for a whole month she didn't come home." She stared curiously at the grim old Prairie Avenue house. It was raining hard now. Lottie glanced quickly up at the parlour window. Sometimes her mother stood there, watching for her, impatient of any waiting. She was not there now. She opened the front door, the two entered—Jeannette the braver of the two.
"Yoo-hoo!" called Lottie with an airy assumption of cheeriness. Jeannette stood looking up and down the long dim hallway with wide ambient eyes. There was no answer to Lottie's call. She sped back to the kitchen.
"Where's mother?"
"She ban gone out."
"Out! Where? It's raining. Pouring!"