The nurse stooped over him professionally but he waved her away.
"Sit down, can't you?" he demanded of Felicia, "it's your move."
Felicia sat down, two spots of color burning in her pale cheeks. She extended her hand over the knight again, bowing imperiously to the angry woman. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes—outside the echoes of the indignant woman's strident voice came across the hallway. She was venting her ill humor on the children noisily returning from their pageant, on the cook, whose frowsy head appeared at the stair landing for dinner orders, on the patient nurse who pattered about on errands.
"—what we're coming to—the trouble is I can't say my soul's my own— sewing women! Playing chess instead of sewing! The last one couldn't sew and this one won't—" She reprimanded a grocer over the telephone, she sent a child snivelling to her bedroom. But the invalid, his eyes intent on the chess board, paid no heed. He moved cautiously, craftily, he had set his heart on winning. And he was too shrewd for Felicia to dare to pretend to let him win.
The minutes seemed like ages but at length, just as the angry voice was subsiding, the old man straightened victoriously on his pillows.
"Check!" he called buoyantly, "Check!"
Felicia arose.
"You play adroitly," she encouraged him. "And I'm really ra-ther glad I stole your luncheon for here comes your supper. I know you'll be hungry for your supper—"
She was outside the door, as quiet as a shadow, fastening Louisa's old bonnet under her chin, buttoning the old coat about her; even before Mrs. Alden was at her side she had Babiche under her arm.
"Here's your money," said the woman stiffly.