She hiked wearily into the deserted "quiet ward," where Polly Chesbro was sprawled on one stained cot and Dick McCue, looking like the returned stray cat he was, on another.
She shook him gently. "Your face better, Dick?"
He sneered experimentally. "I guess so." He yawned, and that did hurt; but not too much. "I thought maybe it was a broken bone, but it just hurts on the skin now. I'll live." He was feeling pretty cheerful. The disappointing parts of his Rout of the Drunken Beast were dropping out of his recollection. He said, "Did you get the car, Mrs. G.?"
"Of course," she said, surprised. "Why not? Things have quieted down. They have time for a reasonable request from an important local business proprietor." He looked at her sharply, but there was no expression on her face. For the first time it occurred to Dick McCue that here was a woman, not so very smart, not so very young, capable of being wrong, capable of having foolish hopes. She thought she was still an important local business proprietor. A ramshackle summer hotel. They folded by the hundreds, year after year; it didn't take a flood to put them out of business. The flood was only the mercy bullet through the blindfold, after the man was down.
Polly was awake. She said, "Mrs. Goudeket, it's nice of you to offer to take us in, but—"
"But?" repeated Mrs. Goudeket. "What but?"
Polly Chesbro said, "I don't want to leave Mr. Starkman."
Mrs. Goudeket snapped angrily, "He's your father, maybe? A whole hospital they bring in on trucks to take care of him, and you can't trust the doctors to fix him up? So stay, Mrs. Chesbro! Hang around the old man some more, make a fool out of yourself. But I have to get to work!"
She glared furiously at the other woman, trembling with anger. Polly Chesbro was wiser than she; Polly felt the anger, and knew it was directed not at herself but at something inside the old lady. Polly said perceptively, "Don't worry, Mrs. Goudeket. Everything always works out."