Catherine hung the instrument slowly in place. Not a word of greeting. But he had probably thrown his study into bedlam—and his disposition. She smiled, faintly, and refusing to admit the little barbed regret, turned to her work.
At noon, in the stuffy telephone booth at the elevator entrance of the St. Francis Club she tried to reach him. But Miss Kelly said he wasn't coming in for luncheon, and no one answered the call for his office.
The afternoon closed around her with steady concentration. Dr. Roberts had said that on Friday there would be a conference: a head of a normal college and a state commissioner of education would be on hand from the West. She wanted this preliminary classification ready.
As she approached the house that evening, she discovered, ironically, that her mind was revolving schemes for propitiation. Steak and onions for dinner, and cream pie, and tactful inquiries about the trip.
There was no rush of children at the sound of her key. She heard Marian's voice, and then Charles's. She hurried down the hall. Letty sat on her father's knee, a crisscross of adhesive plaster on her forehead, from which her hair was smoothed wetly back.
"She would jump on my Pogo stick, Muvver," protested Marian, "and I told her not to, and——"
Catherine was on her knees beside the chair, and Letty's mouth began to quiver again at a fresh spectator of her injury.
"It isn't a bad cut," said Charles, distantly. "Fortunately I came in."
"But where's Miss Kelly?"