"Hello, Ranny," she greeted me easily, in the gray tone that precedes a tempest. "What do you mean by speaking to me as you did over the telephone?"
"I—I mean this," I faltered, but that was the last time I faltered in speaking to her. "Did you or did you not report the case of Alicia to the Home and send an inspectress to me?"
She watched me with narrowed eyelids for a moment and then, deciding evidently, that a little truculence would reduce me to my normal state of pulp, she answered coolly:
"And suppose I did—what of it?"
"I merely want to know the truth," I answered her quietly enough. "Lies are so detestable to me." She flinched perceptibly, but drew herself up with hauteur.
"Well, then I didn't!" she returned loftily. "But what if I had? Somebody ought to have reported it," she ran on with gathering temper by which she thought to crush me. "I think it's indecent for you to have in the house a girl of that age who's no relation to you. The fact that you are a fool doesn't make it any less indecent. I'm the only woman friend you have and somebody has to see you don't make a worse idiot of yourself than nature made you to start with. Now do you understand, my excellent friend?"
And having discharged this volley she stood panting lividly, as if viewing my ruins. At the moment however I could not consider her. I knew only that flashes of red appeared before my eyes, that I spoke the literal truth when I told her:
"To me such an action and the person guilty of it would be equally contemptible."
"You say that to me?" she gasped, taking a step forward, with a colorable imitation of incredulity, strange in view of her denial.
"To you—yes," I told her, quietly enough, for now I was more master of myself. "And contemptible is only a mild euphemism for what I should really think." She stared at me speechless for a moment.