“She'd better come home and stay home,” said Harriet shortly. “I hope it doesn't get in the papers. This dressmaking business is a funny sort of thing. One word against you or any of your family, and the crowd's off somewhere else.”
“There's nothing against Sidney,” K. reminded her. “Nothing in the world. I saw the superintendent myself this afternoon. It seems it's a mere matter of discipline. Somebody made a mistake, and they cannot let such a thing go by. But he believes, as I do, that it was not Sidney.”
However Harriet had hardened herself against the girl's arrival, all she had meant to say fled when she saw Sidney's circled eyes and pathetic mouth.
“You child!” she said. “You poor little girl!” And took her corseted bosom.
For the time at least, Sidney's world had gone to pieces about her. All her brave vaunt of service faded before her disgrace.
When Christine would have seen her, she kept her door locked and asked for just that one evening alone. But after Harriet had retired, and Mimi, the Austrian, had crept out to the corner to mail a letter back to Gratz, Sidney unbolted her door and listened in the little upper hall. Harriet, her head in a towel, her face carefully cold-creamed, had gone to bed; but K.'s light, as usual, was shining over the transom. Sidney tiptoed to the door.
“K.!”
Almost immediately he opened the door.
“May I come in and talk to you?”
He turned and took a quick survey of the room. The picture was against the collar-box. But he took the risk and held the door wide.