I was near the lake when I saw Lizzie. She was walking up a side path that crossed mine, her head down, her step quick and decided. She didn’t see me and I stood and waited. Then her eye, deep and absorbed, shifted, caught me, and she came to an abrupt halt. For the first startled moment there was an indecision about her poised body and annoyed face that suggested flight. If I did not share her dismay, I did her surprise. This was the hour set for the second lesson. Of course she might have told Betty that she would give no more, also she might have been hastening to the tryst with the new pupil. You never could tell. In answer to my smiling hail she approached, not smiling but looking darkly intent and purposeful.
“Which way are you going?” she said, by way of greeting.
I have been called a tactful person, and acquaintance with Lizzie has developed what was an untrained instinct into a ripened art:
“Nowhere in particular. I’m just strolling about in the sun.”
Obviously relieved, she said:
“I’m going over there—” pointing to the apartment-houses across the park. “I have business on the west side.”
The new pupil lived on the east side. So she really had given it up.
“You’ve told Mrs. Ferguson that you won’t give that lesson—the one she telephoned about?”
A sudden blankness fell on her face.
“Didn’t you get the letter I put under your door?” I cried in alarm. I couldn’t bear just now, with everything failing me, to have Betty angry.