"Let's go and get something to eat!" she said at length. She got up and washed away signs of tears. She brushed her hair, she powdered her nose, she got out a smarter pair of shoes. "Let's walk and walk," she said. "I could walk all night." Out on the street there, Emily felt Martha's strong arm impelling her along by the passion of her relief. She walked with her head held high, she walked fiercely, like an arrow sure of its target. When they stopped at a crossing, her feet could not stop their triumph. Emily could feel her dancing. She kept babbling, singing, running on. Emily said at length: "I can't go any farther. I'm too tired." And then in a minute or two they were turning into an opportune restaurant.
It was a large, uncarpeted room, with two rows of white-tiled tables on either side of a central aisle. Martha walked down that aisle ahead of her mother. Her head was held that tense way, her eyes were shining positively black against her white face, her air was wild. People looked and started and continued staring at her as if they had seen a pretty young lunatic at large, or an aggressive and beautiful girl-ghost. And Martha, not thinking of them, walked straight to the farthest table and would have sat down facing the crowd, if Emily had not chosen that seat for herself. Emily was conscious of the sensation their entrance had made. She was wondering how Martha's excited pallor had triumphed over all the color she had applied, for certainly she had stood dabbing rouge on—before her mirror. Martha grabbed the menu. She had been talking of turkey, of lobster. She was hungry enough to eat anything. She ordered a large steak for two, with mushrooms. She ordered asparagus and fried potatoes, and bread—a plateful of brown bread. She ordered coffee. She would order a lobster later, she told the waiter. When he had gone, she began whispering to Emily:
"Mammie, did you get our reservations? Oh, I thought I would be going home in a——!"
"Don't!" murmured Emily.
"Can we go and change them on our way home? Let's go on the eleven o'clock. But no, we must go to another doctor to-morrow."
Emily tried to calm her. It was herself the child was enjoying now, as if her years of enjoying her thoughts had been preparing her for this climax. She looked as if she might burst into flame. She did burst forth when dinner was being set before her. The waiter was arranging her great feast, when she cried out, suddenly unable to smother the joy of some thought. She cried out, with a gesture of her hands below the table, "Oh, my God!" so that the waiter fairly jumped. People about were watching them. They smiled unanimously. Martha didn't seem even to know she was in a restaurant.
The next morning Martha said she hadn't slept well, but Emily had watched her sleeping through the early morning, and when she commented on the significance of that fact, Martha was elated again above her weariness by happiness. She went for a walk in the morning alone. Emily felt too exhausted to go with her. She ate more heartily than she had been able to eat the evening before. That great steak and those mushrooms she had not been able to give any real attention to. She appealed to her mother every few minutes to tell her the truth about the doctor's verdict, to comfort her about the probable outcome of their visit to the next doctor. She walked about excitedly.
Late that afternoon the second doctor pronounced her free.
They came back to their hotel almost without a word. In their room they sat down; they looked at each other dazed; they each felt the other trying to fathom the experience through which they had gone. "How could that have happened?" Martha demanded. "Do they think—I IMAGINED that vomiting? Do they think I didn't try to believe I was all right?"
It seemed to Emily best to pass as lightly as possible over even the word "hysteria."