He couldn’t tell whether she was blaming him now, or herself. “Write to Jessie Dartrey,” he suggested. “She’d come out like a shot.”
“Poor Jessie . . . !” she murmured.
Wilfred breathed with relief. He saw that the corner was turned.
“Wilfred, I can’t help disliking Stanny!” she said with a rush, imploringly.
“It doesn’t matter—if you face it out with yourself.”
Frances Mary started busily to work on her sock again. Her expression assumed to wipe out everything that had been said since she dropped it. “If you don’t write to Stanny at once,” she said to Wilfred rebukingly, “you’ll miss the last collection. . . . And oh! don’t forget to carry your old shoes to the cobbler’s to-morrow. They wont see you through three days’ walking . . .”
III
Wilfred went to meet the nine-forty from town. The morning had broken gloriously after rain. Oh, the new-washed sky, the glittering trees, and the crystal air! How the group of ugly little buildings which included the station, seemed to plume itself in that sweet clarity—like a gnome dressed in gossamer. That awful ice-cream saloon built two years ago, and already aged, with its cheap cotton awning disfigured by blue lettering stained with the weather; even this was—well, one couldn’t call it lovely, yet he approved it. It belonged. Wilfred’s heart puffed up in his breast like a pop-over in the oven. Too much baking-powder, he thought, grinning at himself.
When Stanny got off the train, Wilfred saw in a glance by the down-drawn corners of his mouth, and his wretched eyes, that he had been having one of his bad times. Lucky I happened to write just then, he thought. Stanny’s friendly greeting was forced.
“Hello, Wilf!”