"Yes, I shouldn't wonder if she'd have lots of new clothes."
"She'll need more than clothes to make her presentable, and she knows it, too." Annabel's voice was rasping. "They have beauty-shops in the cities, you know, where they fix over old women who want to look young, skin off the wrinkles and all sorts of things." She flashed a glance at the mirror—there was always a mirror convenient in the Sinclair establishment—and smiled with malicious enjoyment. Annabel did not need skinning.
Diantha edged away with sudden distaste. "I don't think Miss Persis would do anything like that, mama."
"Why not?" Her mother spoke fiercely. "It's the sensible thing to do when you need it. After her good looks are gone, there's nothing left for a woman." The bitterness of a participant in a losing fight flung a black shadow across her fairness. For defy Time as she would, the day must come when he would triumph. She looked again at herself in the mirror as if already he had stolen the bloom from her cheek and the gold from her hair and shuddered at the thought of what must be.
Persis had said to her brother that she might be away a week. On the sixth day came a brief note to the effect that her business was not quite finished and that she would let him know when to expect her. Another week went by, and one afternoon Joel received his first telegram.
He stood staring at the sinister brown envelope with its black lettering, and a chilly fear clutched his heart. One catastrophe after another suggested itself, each to be discarded in favor of another more appalling. Persis had lost her money. She had met with an accident. She was dead. His bony hand shook till the envelope rattled, and the small boy who had brought the message eyed him with curiosity.
"Any answer?"
The question was reassuring. It suggested that Persis was still to be reached by mundane means of communication. Joel regarded the lad appealingly.
"Say, son, do you know what's in this?"
"Naw!" The boy's tone showed impatience tinged with contempt. "Why don't you look and see for yourself?"