"Here's your taxi again," called out the starter.
Miss Witherspoon was startled and indignant. She looked about as though hoping by some miracle Hertha would appear at her side. Then, appreciating the futility of attempting any search, she got into the taxi with her bags and, chagrined and disappointed, was driven through the crowded streets.
"What shall I say to them in Boston?" she asked herself.
II
KATHLEEN
CHAPTER XIII
Noise! Thundering, reverberating noise. Noise that never ceases, noise that deadens the brain and makes the hand jerk in response to the jarred nerves; always, day and night, throughout the length of the city streets, the clamor of inanimate things.
In the morning when Hertha slipped to her seat, the last but one in the fourth line, she started her own thundering whir. The forty machines, all going at once, sounded like nothing so much as the great beetles that flew about her southern home in the summer evenings. But the beetles came but rarely and went with the withdrawal of the lamp, while here in the workroom the drumming was incessant. Always it was hurrying her, calling upon her to make better speed, to push the white fabric more quickly that the needle might make a greater number of punctures to the minute; to hasten, though her hands trembled, and though the tension drew her mouth into a narrow line and brought her brows together in a frown.