"My, I'm glad to get in again," said Gertrude Fagan.
"Why, dear?"
"It's so horrible a night like this. I hate it all."
"What do you mean? But we'd better go up to my room. We'll wake Aunt M. if we sit down here, and it's so hard to get her to sleep again."
"I don't suppose she's much better, is she?" whispered Gertrude Fagan as they tiptoed up the heavily carpeted stairs. Nan winced when a board creaked on the second flight.
"No," she was whispering over her shoulder, "though there doesn't seem to be any danger of another stroke just at present. There doesn't seem to be any cure for the aphasia, though Doctor Smythe talks wisely enough about it ... Whew, it's hot in here."
Nan went to the window without turning on the light and pushed it up hard. A heavy scent of lilacs came in off the Public Garden where the occasional lights were misted with the green of young leaves. Beyond, the electric signs of Boylston and Tremont Streets sent a great glare up into the milky spring sky. An automobile whirred past. There were steps on the pavements. She turned back into the room.
Gertrude Fagan sat on the bed with her hat on her knee. The reading lamp she had just switched on threw her eyes into shadow.
"Look, Nancibel, at my shadow on the wall," she said harshly. "Wouldn't think I had a hooked beak like that, would you?"
"How absurd, Gertrude! Look, this is the room I used to have when I was a little girl ... I'll put you up next door."