“He suggested your coming to dinner, my dear.”
They smiled at each other.
“Then I’ll go.” She turned swiftly to Helen. “Oh, work it out if you can, Helen. Not working it out—is horrible.”
CHAPTER XXIII
RESPITE
FREDA was trying to mend a blouse. Her unskillful fingers pricked themselves and it was obvious that even her laborious efforts could do little to make the waist presentable. Its frayed cuffs were beyond repairing. However, it would do until they got to Mohawk and she could get the clothes which she had there. She had not written her mother to send her anything. Nor had she spent any of the money the Flandons had sent for such luxuries as new clothes. She had been uplifted when that check for a thousand dollars—not for six hundred—had slipped out of the envelope with Mrs. Flandon’s kind, congratulatory letter. Gregory’s three hundred had been put back in his purse and then, as it gradually came over her impractical mind that such a sum was totally inadequate to their need she had told him that she had some money of her own—a little reserve which had been sent to her. Naturally he had assumed her father had sent it and later she thought she would tell him that it was a debt they had assumed and make arrangements for paying it. Not now. He must not worry now about the money. She looked across the room at him—their shabby little hotel room, with its lace curtains pinned back for air and the shaky table desk dragged up before the window. He had not been quite fit enough to travel when they left the hospital, and she had insisted that he must try his strength before they made the journey to Mohawk, the first lap on the way back to Ireland. How eager he was to be off now—how impossible it was to check him! She forgot the blouse and sat looking at him, sitting there unconscious of her regard. His profile was outlined against the blank window opening, still so thin, and yet so restored.
“It’s getting dark. You ought to stop now, Gregory. You’ll be worn out.”
He did not hear her. That was one of the things she had found out could happen. Especially since this lot of mail had been forwarded from his bureau, letters full of such terrible news for him from Ireland. His friends were in prison—were killed. Devastation was spreading.
She rose, with a new air of maturity and crossed to him.
“It’s growing late.” This time she came behind his chair and bent her cheek to his.
He moved absently.