A few minutes later, when Janet came out of the inner sanctum, trailing a patient, and went over to Petra’s desk, Petra showed her the envelope; but she had erased McCloud’s last remark. The secretary frowned. It worried her, for some reason or other. That was obvious. After a minute of brooding over it, she whispered, “I’m sorry you let him go, Petra. The doctor would have made a point of seeing Mr. McCloud. It must be something very special he wanted, really special, I mean. But you couldn’t know.... I think we’d better do what he asks and not say anything about it now to the doctor. It would bother him. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. He must have hated explaining to you about his speech. He’s morbidly sensitive about it. It was hard enough the first time he came and wrote it all down for me—but to have to do it all over again—”
So it was as bad as that! Janet’s expression even more than the words she said told Petra how serious a blunder she had made in sending McCloud away. It was so serious, in fact, that Janet wanted to protect Doctor Pryne from knowing that it had happened at all. But as to the man’s embarrassment, Petra was skeptical, remembering the sentence she had read upside down!
“But look here, Petra, don’t let this one first mistake discourage you,” Janet murmured quickly, as the doctor’s buzzer summoned her to bring in the next patient. “Go on swimming. Don’t get self-mistrustful. It’s like riding. After a spill you must get right up and mount again, or you’re queered. Better luck next time.”
At lunch Dick Wilder found Petra more bafflingly uncommunicative than usual, even, and she ate almost nothing of the very expensive and knowing meal he had ordered for her. What use was it for him to chatter on about Green Doors—and incidentally, of course, Clare—with some one who murmured back mere Yeses and Noes! The only consolation that Dick got from that luncheon hour was the overt admiration he saw in surrounding faces for his companion. These men and women had no way of knowing that his companion was as completely uninteresting as she was completely beautiful. They probably thought him much to be envied, extraordinarily lucky.
“Look here,” he said rather desperately, when he opened the door of his car to let her out in front of her office building, “let me drive you out to-night, Petra. It will be beastly going in the train in this heat.”
“Clare is giving that big dinner party to-night,” Petra reminded him. “She won’t have a minute for you. Some other night.”
But Dick persisted. He was ready to take his chances. When they got to Green Doors he would go in with Petra for a few minutes and stay talking. Clare might be around somewhere. They could exchange one word at least, one look. It would be little Sophia’s bedtime. He might be invited up to the nursery to join with little Sophia’s nurse in her role of enchanted chorus to the nightly repeated scene—the cherub’s supper hour. But he said nothing of his real designs to Petra. He merely exclaimed, “What has Clare to do with it? You’re a funny girl! It’s you I’m asking. I’ll be down here at the door at four.”
Janet’s door, the doctor’s door, the door into the public hall were all wide open when Petra got back. Janet heard her come in and sang out from the dressing room, “I’m just off for lunch, Petra. Won’t be gone twenty minutes. Too hot to eat.” Then, as Petra came up behind her, she turned from the mirror where she had been adjusting her hat and her voice changed. “You poor child! What is the matter?”
“Nothing. What should be?” Petra put away her hat and got out her compact. But Janet would not accept the nonchalant denial. “I know what’s wrong. That McCloud business. But cheer up. For months after I began this job I averaged about half a dozen mistakes a week. Nobody’s infallible. And anyway, I’ve reconsidered it. There is no real reason why that young man should consider himself an exception and come around without appointments. He did the same thing last week. And Doctor Pryne saw him and was over an hour late in leaving the office as a consequence. To-day he would probably have gone without his lunch. It’s really rather cheeky. To-day may make him see it. I myself wouldn’t have dared send him off, because I know how the doctor feels, but you didn’t know, and he only got what he deserves. So cheer up. You’re in charge now till I return. The doctor won’t be back before half-past two, probably.”
But Petra was not much comforted. Her confidence in her own adequacy had been so high only so few hours ago! And ever since the McCloud incident she had felt dashed. But how was she to know who was important, of the people who came to the office or called on the telephone, as long as they remained merely names to her in her appointment book and in the bare files in her desk. Janet, of course, knew the intimate details of all the cases. She took their “histories” down in shorthand, and even some of the conferences later, and filed them in the big steel cases in the inner office. If Petra, now, had known something of Mr. McCloud’s “history,” she might have known what to do with him this morning. But Janet, in initiating her into the work, had told her absolutely nothing of the personalities she would so soon be dealing with. Her information had confined itself strictly to names and ages. It was too great a handicap!