"Yes," she said, "I suppose that was it."
The milliner shot out a sharp glance at her. "Sit down," she said bruskly, and nodded to a chair.
Rose didn't much want to. Her instinct was to stay on her feet until she'd won her battle, and her fatigue only heightened it. But Miss Gibbons had given her an order rather than an invitation, and she obeyed it.
The older woman didn't sit down.
"Harvey Granger," she said thoughtfully, "will never forgive me as long as he lives, for not thinking he's a great man. That's just ridiculous, of course, because I know Harve. Years ago, you see,—so long ago that everybody's forgotten it—my father was the big man down in this part of the state. He was a circuit judge, when circuit judges amounted to something, and he was one of the best of them. But he was a fool about money and he got mixed up in things—and died. I was twenty-five years old then, and I took to hats.
"Well, Harve Granger was my father's law-clerk before father was elected judge. I used to see him night and morning. And, as I say, I know him all the way through. He knows I know him, and that's what he can't get over."
There was a little silence when she finished; a silence Rose's instinct told her not to break. Presently the little woman wheeled around on her.
"Well," she said, "you came to me anyway, though you saw the judge meant it for a joke. Why did you do that?"
"I don't know," said Rose. "I thought I would."
"And you haven't told me yet," said Miss Gibbons, "that you're really straight and respectable. What have you got to say about that?"