At this, my first use of her Christian name, she flashed back at me a single veiled glance of astonishment, and started for the door. But before I could reach her side my Husband stepped forward and blocked her exit by the seemingly casual accident of plunging both arms rather wildly into the sleeves of his great city-going raincoat.
"Why the thing is absurd!" he protested. "You can't possibly make train connections! And there isn't even a covered shed at the Junction! If this matter is so important I'll run you up to town myself in the little closed car!"
Across Ann Woltor's imperturbable face an expression that would have meant an in-growing scream on any other person's countenance flared up in a single twitching lip-muscle and was gone again. Behind the smiling banter in my Husband's eyes she also perhaps had noted a determination quite as stubborn as her own.
"Why—if you insist," she acquiesced, "but it has always distressed me more than I can say to inconvenience anybody."
"Inconvenience—nothing!" beamed my Husband. Ordinarily speaking my Husband would not be described I think as having a beaming expression.
With a chug like the chug of a motor-boat the little closed car came splashing laboriously round the driveway. Its glassy face was streaked with tears. Depressant as black life- preservers its two extra tires gleamed and dripped in their jetty enamel-cloth casings. A jangle as of dungeon chains clanked heavily from each fresh revolution of its progress.
Everybody came rushing helpfully to assist in the embarkation.
My Husband's one remark to me flung back in a whisper from the steering wheel, though frankly confidential, concerned Allan John alone.
"Don't let Allan John want for anything to-day," he admonished me. "Keep his body and mind absolutely glutted with bland things like cocoa and reading aloud . . . And don't wait supper for us!"
With her gay jonquil-colored oil-skin coat swathing her sombre figure, Ann Woltor slipped into the seat beside him and slammed the door behind her. Her face was certainly a study.