“He has been detained in the West on business,” Lucy said.
“He might have sent me a postcard. And he hasn't written Doctor Reynolds at all.”
“He has been very busy. Get the sugar bowl, Minnie. He'll be back soon, I'm sure.”
But Minnie did not immediately move.
“He'd better come soon if he wants to see Doctor David,” she said, with twitching lips. “And I'll just say this, Mrs. Crosby. The talk that's going on in this town is something awful.”
“I don't want to hear it,” Lucy said firmly.
She ate alone, painfully remembering that last gay little feast before they started away. But before she sat down she did a touching thing. She rang the bell and called Minnie.
“After this, Minnie,” she said, “we will always set Doctor Richard's place. Then, when he comes—”
Her voice broke and Minnie, scenting a tragedy but ignorant of it, went back to her kitchen to cry into the roller towel. Her world was gone to pieces. By years of service to the one family she had no other world, no home, no ties. She was with the Livingstones, but not one of them. Alone in her kitchen she felt lonely and cut off. She thought that David, had he not been ill, would have told her.
Lucy found David moving about upstairs some time later, and when she went up she found him sitting in Dick's room, on a stiff chair inside the door. She stood beside him and put her hand on his shoulder, but he did not say anything, and she went away.