“Jane! Janey! Janikins!” breathed Gloria into the bonnet strings. “How crazy I am to see you! You look—wonderful!”
“My Glory girl!” replied the woman uncertainly. “I felt as if you had gone to foreign fields with your father. It has been the longest time——”
“Come over here a moment,” Gloria interrupted. “I have to look—for—someone else.” She was inspecting the few arrivals as she said this, but no potential Mrs. Corday loomed up.
A great gulp of relief almost choked the girl. She looked again, more critically.
“I guess she—didn’t come!”
“Some friend?” asked Jane, with a polite interest.
“No. That is she is the mother or stepmother of a friend. One of the girls is sick and I was commissioned to meet the mother.” Each word was clipped off and stood up straight as a spike, without so much as leaning one tone upon another.
“Very sick?” Jane mistook distaste for anxiety.
“I had better make sure she didn’t come,” continued Gloria. “There’s a Pullman. She might have been on that.”
“Run right along, child, and attend to your errand,” said Jane. “I’ll go in the waiting room and straighten my bonnet—if there’s a glass.”