Waiting, till I could get away without being noticed, to carry my note to Kleiner Klaus's.
Waiting, for the Klaus's boy to come home.
Waiting, while his mother brushed his clothes and cuffed him. Waiting, while he recovered his spirits. Waiting, while slowly, slowly, his mind took in the particulars of his errand, and the most particular part of it, in his eyes—the penny he should have when he brought me back an answer.
And the long hours of that afternoon waiting for the answer, or even for the errand-boy to come back. When I was not looking out of the window my mind was still so bent on listening for one particular footstep on the brick walk, and at the door his voice—the only voice in the world with meaning in it—that scarcely any impression was made on me by other steps and other voices. I heard them, subconsciously, to dismiss them; for everything was irrelevance that wasn't Eric.
But my mother interrupted my mechanical reading aloud. "Who," (with her air of listening to sounds beyond my ken) "who can all those people be?"
There was Bettina in the passage making frantic signs that I was to hurry out and speak to her. And voices of men and women came up from the open door. I recognised Lord Helmstone's. I heard him asking the maid if Mr. Annan were here.
"No? That's very odd," said Hermione in her sceptical way—"Perhaps he's come in without your knowing. Will you just find out?"
My mother, too, had heard Lord Helmstone's cheerful bass, suggesting that his party might take shelter here. I had not noticed before the slight rain falling. "Go and ask him to come upstairs," my mother said. And lower: "I don't want him to take it amiss." I saw she was thinking of her refusal to let Betty go on the yacht.
Betty was waiting for me in ambush near the head of the stair: "You must come down and help me. Ranny is there, too."
I was bewildered at finding so many at the door. For besides Lord Helmstone and Hermione, there was Lady Barbara, and Ranny Dallas and his friend—a cheerful, talkative, red-haired man they called Courtney.