"She's gone."
"Has Mrs. Payson been here?"
"Long. She left an hour ago."
There were the other buildings on Forty-third Street. But she couldn't have gone way up there, Lottie told herself. But she decided to try them. On the way she stopped at the house. Her mother had not yet come in. She went on up to Forty-third, the spring rain lashing the glassed-in hood of the electric. Yes, her mother had been there and gone. Lottie was conscious of a little hot flame of anger rising, rising in her. It seemed to drum in her ears. It made her eyelids smart and sting. She set her teeth. She swung the car over to Gus's market on Forty-third. Her hands gripped the levers so that the ungloved knuckles showed white.
"It's a damned shame, that's what it is!" she said, aloud; and sobbed a little. "It's a damned shame, that's what it is. She could have waited. It's just pure meanness. She could have waited. I wish I was dead!"
It was as though the calm, capable, resourceful woman of the ten o'clock court room scene had never been.
"Gus, has my mother——?"
"She's just went. You can ketch her yet. I told her to wait till it let up a little. She was wetter'n a drowned rat. But not her! You know your ma! Wait nothin'."
Lottie headed toward Indiana Avenue and the car line. Her eyes searched the passers-by beneath their dripping umbrellas. Then she spied her, a draggled black-garbed figure, bundle laden, waiting on the corner for her car. Her left arm—the bad one—was held stiffly folded in front of her, close to her body. That meant pain. Her shoulders were hunched a little. Her black hat was slightly askew. Lottie noted, with the queer faculty one has for detail at such times, that her colour was slightly yellow. But as she peered up the street in vain hope of an approaching street car, her glance was as alert as ever. She walked forward toward the curb to scan the empty car tracks. Lottie noticed her feet. In the way she set them down; in their appearance of ankle-weakness and a certain indescribable stiffness that carried with it a pathetic effort at spryness there was, somehow, a startling effect of age, of feebleness. She toed in a little with weariness. A hot blur sprang to Lottie's eyes. She drew up sharply at the curb, flung open the door, was out, had seized the bundles and was propelling her mother toward the electric almost before Mrs. Payson had realised her presence.
"Mother dear, why didn't you wait!"