“And I heard she wasn’t.”
“Honestly, Pat, joking aside, isn’t Jack back?”
“No joking to put aside. I hate to repeat, considering the English Lit. and google-eyed Rachel Sander’s hopes for real stuff, but choose a new style, Glo, and come right out frank and honest. Tell me what you mean by your bag full of question marks. Who saw Jack and when?”
“Why——” The word was drawled to hide rather than to disclose any meaning.
“Now you’re holding back,” declared the keen witted Pat, deliberately folding over a half page of the big book. “What do you know about Jack? I am almost dead since she left. Jack is a human blotter, wipes out all the day’s blots with her dashing surprises. There, I almost went literary that time, didn’t I? Although I could see Jack making more blots than she obliterated. Another good word,” with ready pencil noted, “and I’ll stick in some place if I have to obliterate Rachel with it,” declared Pat. “Meanwhile, Glo, I’m waiting to hear the news.”
“That’s exactly what I came for,” flung back Gloria, “and you haven’t even asked me to sit down.”
“Do.”
“Where?”
“Oh, I’m rather crowded,” with a supercilious glance at her untidy room. “You see, every one comes in to help me and they eat my fudge, look in my mirror, try my powder and Blanche Baldwin tried my comb.”
“May I try your trunk?”