“I didn’t bring it with me. In fact, I accidentally dropped it in the grate and it was burned before I could get it out.”
“A grate fire in July?”
“I was burning some scraps—and it got mixed with them.”
“You are not going away until papa comes home. It isn’t fair to him—and if you insist—I shall call Sylvia by long distance.”
Judith averted her eyes. The sight of her mother-in-law’s baffled fury was more than she could endure. In the end the woman agreed to defer her trip until Saturday night. She would write Sylvia that she could not be spared from home.
IV
Early Friday morning she came with another request. She had a letter from her husband which she handed to Lary, ostentatiously. David was entirely willing that she should go to Detroit. In fact, he had promised Sylvia that they together would visit her as soon as the housecleaning and redecorating of the apartment was over. He would have earned a vacation when the Jacksonville contract was finished.
“Now, Larimore, if you will look after the ticket—and the sleeper berth—I’ll only take a suit case, and your father can bring what I need in his trunk. By that time, I’ll know about the weather, and what kind of clothes I need. I want the ticket via Chicago. It’s so much shorter than the other route.”
“Chicago?” Something feline, insinuating, in her tone arrested him. “There’s no direct route from Springdale to Detroit via Chicago. You would have to go to Littlefield and wait there for the St. Louis train—and in Chicago it would mean going from one station to the other. The last time you tried that, you got lost, and missed your connection.”
“But I must—that is, I’d prefer to go that way. It wouldn’t matter if I did miss my train. Sylvia wants me to do some shopping for her.”