She’s a simply grand person. Good enough to know Teresa....
Friendship is as independent of time as is Eternity. It may require years to arrive, or it may be there, how and why unknown, as if it had always existed, at the trembling of a leaf. Miss Frazier and Teresa were bound to be friends, sooner or later. But to her complete astonishment, as Petra hurried belatedly down to join Dick in his car, she realized that she and Miss Frazier were friends already.
Chapter Ten
Cynthia Allen was sitting at her dressing table giving her make-up its final touches for dinner and the evening and chatting in the direction of her husband, who was over on the window seat skimming the Transcript. The real reading would come later, after dinner, with the radio for accompaniment. But in spite of Harry’s being directly in the open window, and silent while Cynthia was vocal, it was she, not he, who knew that a car had turned in at their driveway, and ran, lipstick in hand, to kneel beside him and see who it was. For Cynthia, like most adults, if they told the truth about it, felt that every sound of a car’s brakes, every ring of a bell, every knock, might be a possible harbinger of Destiny.
In the present instance, however, there was no grinding of brakes where the Allens’ driveway met the highway, for Lewis’ glittering, long-bodied roadster was very nearly silent in all its ways. What Cynthia had heard was merely the spurt of gravel between her gates. “If only Lewis would live up to his car!” she often sighed to herself. “If he would have an important-looking office and good-looking tailored clothes!” But she supposed that the car was a tool in his work and that was why he allowed himself always the latest and most expensive model.
“It’s Lewis,” she told Harry, who had not so much as turned his head. Harry’s apparent indifference did not deceive his wife, however, nor irritate her. She imagined him every bit as sensitive as herself to the possibilities attending the unexpected; putting off the moment of knowing merely prolonged his agreeable suspense. “But Lewis is a thoughtless beast,” she said aloud. “He might have called up. Nellie will be frantic.”
Then she pushed up the screen and leaned over the sill. Her brother had seen her and stopped under the window.
“Go right around to the kitchen,” she whispered down, her hands funneling her lips. “Tell Nellie that I didn’t invite you or dream you were coming, that you’re not company, and she’s not to do the least bit of fussing for you. I wouldn’t go near her on a bet, myself, but you, with your wide experience, may know how to handle a maddened woman.”
Before Lewis had started on, she leaned from the window again and called down in her natural voice, “Harry says we’re delighted you’ve come.”