"What for? You stay here where it's comfortable. You go up to your room and I'll let you know. I'm on till midnight."
"Just go up and wait?" Catherine was piteous.
"Yes, ma'am. I'll take care of you. Now don't you go worrying. I always tell my wife she'd have the grass growing over all of us if worry could do it. That's the woman of it, I suppose."
"You're very kind." Catherine was reluctant to leave him. He was a sort of bulwark between her and the rush of dark fear. "I ought to wire them——"
"Sure. Here, write it out. It stands in reason he needn't be hurt much, and still he'd want his mother."
Catherine's pencil wobbled in her stiff fingers. Spencer would want her. All day he had wanted her. Hours between them——
"Will take first train." She looked up, her lip quivering. "I wouldn't have time for an answer, would I?"
"You ought not to, if that train's anywhere near on time, and if there's a berth left on it." The clerk turned away, to fish cigars out of his counter for a man who stood waiting, one hand plying a busy toothpick.
"D'yuh hear anything about the blizzard down Chicago way?" the man asked. "Say it's put kinks in the train service."