But Margot found the matron doing a strange thing. She had a long pipe running from a box on the wall, and sometimes she was calling into it, or a hole beside it, in the most absurd way: “Hello! Hello, Central!” or else she was holding the tube to her ear and listening.
“What is it? What are you doing?”
“The telephone. I’m ringing up your friend. I’ll tell you what I hear, soon.”
Even the matron rather objected to having this oddly-dressed, inquisitive girl continually at hand, asking questions. She was busy and tired, and Margot understood that she was dismissed to her bench and Joe.
There she settled herself to think. It was time she did. If this friendly widow, whom her family had always known, could not be found, where should she go? To some hotel she supposed, and wondered which and where.
She was still deep in her musings when the matron touched her arm.
“I got an answer. The number is all right. It is the lady’s home when she is in town, but she has been in the country all summer. The boarding-house—it’s that—is closed except for the janitor, and he doesn’t know where she has gone. That’s all.”
It might be “all,” but it made the woodlander’s heart sink. Then she looked up and saw a vaguely familiar profile, yet she knew nobody, had seen nobody at home, and not even on her journey, whom she could remember to have been just like this.
It was the face of a young man, who was dressed like all these other city men about her, though with a something different and finer in the fit and finish of the light gray suit he wore. A slight moustache darkened his upper lip, and he fingered this lovingly, as one might a new possession. A gray haired lady leaned lightly on his arm and he carried her wraps upon his other. Suddenly she spoke to him, as they moved outward toward a suburban train, and he smiled down upon her. It was the smile that revealed him—Adrian.