A singular mixture of emotions surged through her. She felt as if someone were secretly laughing at her. Joe Hooper, she had decided, had been one of those people who could never learn how to do things. And yet, unless her eyes had deceived her, here he had burst gorgeously from his chrysalis. She was not sure she was glad of it, either. Charity, especially of thought, is frequently more of a luxury to the donor than to the recipient.
She hurried on. The street was becoming more crowded and the heat, if anything, more intense. She began to feel just a bit angry with herself for exposing herself to it. Her face felt as if it were burning up. It had not been at all necessary. She could just as well have sent someone else. And here she was plugging along, with her clothes all sticky, her hair coming down in wisps about her ears, and her face as red as a beet. Funny, what had come over Joe. She was certain it had been he but it seemed improbable. And she had been sorry for him. He was the kind who could not "put anything across."
All her complacency was gone as she opened the tea-room door. She was hot and tired and hurried. The little clock on the mantelshelf said a quarter to twelve as she closed the door behind her and then she saw that there was a customer at a far table in the corner and realized how late she was. A short, fat little woman was sitting tensely on the edge of a chair, looking about her with quick, restless, stabbing glances. She had on an atrocity of a hat that looked as though someone had plumped down on her head a flimsy crate of refuse blossoms and vegetables. It was a riot of colour and disorder. And her short, protuberant bosom rested on the table's edge while the face above it was marked with stern lines of dissatisfaction. Little folds of flesh hung down below her jaws.
Giving Mary Louise a momentary appraising glance, us the latter came in with her bundle, she snapped out: "This place open, you suppose?"
Mary Louise hastily laid down the menus. "Yes," she said, "it is. Haven't you been waited on?"
"No," said the old lady, stirring in her chair and making as if to rise, though wild horses could not have pulled her away from even the prospect of food. "I've been sitting here ten minutes by your clock." She turned away and stared gloomily into space with her mouth sharply set in indignant endurance of such mistreatment.
Mary Louise hurried across the room. She pushed open the swinging door into the passage that led to the kitchen. Everything was quiet. She wondered at it. As she stood there for an unappreciable instant, she heard a slight sound to her right, seemingly from the little pantry or storage room that was tucked in beneath the stairs. The door of it ordinarily stood open.
She paused a moment then took one step forward and pushed open the door.
Full beneath the light of the pendent lamp, leaning against the serving table for support, stretched the billowy form of Maida Jones, half reclining in the arms of the sleek-haired cook who sat on the table edge and faced the door. Her head was thrown back in complete abandonment and her hair was coming down about her shoulders. The boy's close-set eyes peered up sharply as Mary Louise opened the door. Then there was an immediate scurry, the lamp was switched off, and directly Maida emerged flushed and sullen.
Mary Louise was stunned. Her ideas were chaotic and could take no form. But as they stood there facing each other, she was conscious of a rising sense of the ludicrous mingled with disgust. The memory of that momentary scene lingered in her mind like a piece of burlesque statuary. She stifled a desire to laugh.