Mrs. McKee agreed. Being of the class who believe a boudoir cap the ideal headdress for a motor-car, she apologized for having none.
“If I'd known you were coming I would have borrowed a cap,” she said. “Miss Tripp, third floor front, has a nice one. If you'll take me in my toque—”
K. said he'd take her in her toque, and waited with some anxiety, having not the faintest idea what a toque was. He was not without other anxieties. What if the sight of Tillie's baby did not do all that he expected? Good women could be most cruel. And Schwitter had been very vague. But here K. was more sure of himself: the little man's voice had expressed as exactly as words the sense of a bereavement that was not a grief.
He was counting on Mrs. McKee's old fondness for the girl to bring them together. But, as they neared the house with its lanterns and tables, its whitewashed stones outlining the drive, its small upper window behind which Joe was waiting for night, his heart failed him, rather. He had a masculine dislike for meddling, and yet—Mrs. McKee had suddenly seen the name in the wooden arch over the gate: “Schwitter's.”
“I'm not going in there, Mr. Le Moyne.”
“Tillie's not in the house. She's back in the barn.”
“In the barn!”
“She didn't approve of all that went on there, so she moved out. It's very comfortable and clean; it smells of hay. You'd be surprised how nice it is.”
“The like of her!” snorted Mrs. McKee. “She's late with her conscience, I'm thinking.”
“Last night,” K. remarked, hands on the wheel, but car stopped, “she had a child there. It—it's rather like very old times, isn't it? A man-child, Mrs. McKee, not in a manger, of course.”