He bade his friend good-bye here and ran up the brown stone steps, opened the door with his latch key, and entered into a chill vault, dark, muffled, dismal. He hung up coat and hat on a gigantic piece of furniture which towered up to the ceiling and which was at once a hat rack, a pier-glass, a bureau with six drawers and a low table with a marble top. Then he ran up the thickly carpeted stairs to a bedroom on the floor above where he knew he would find his mother.
Sure enough, there she was, sitting in her rocking chair, with folded hands, looking out on to the quiet street, a fragile little old lady of sixty with a contemptuous, wizened little face and melancholy brown eyes. She was dressed in her Sunday dress of black silk with a white lace vest, she wore her best earrings, her diamond brooch, and a fine wool shawl bundled about her narrow shoulders.
“Well!” she said with a smile.
Her son approached and kissed her reverently.
“I was very sorry, Mother, to miss taking you to church,” he said, “but I didn’t wake up until eleven. It was three o’clock when we got to bed.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Did they dance on Sunday morning? Well, I dare say no one thinks of such things any longer. However, it didn’t matter, Gilbert. I had a touch of rheumatism, I shouldn’t have gone anyway.”
“Pshaw!” he said solicitously. “Your shoulder again, Mother?”
“It doesn’t matter. Sit down, Gilbert, and tell me all about it.”
He sat down opposite her, smoothing his sleek black head.