I
Miss Reynolds called Grace on the telephone a week after Kemp’s death and with her usual kindly peremptoriness demanded that Grace dine with her the following night.
“I went away unexpectedly and didn’t have a chance to let you know. I’ve got something I want to talk to you about—just you and me. Please come!”
Grace was ashamed not to manifest more cordiality in accepting the invitation but she was beset by fears lest Miss Reynolds was seizing the first possible moment to question her as to her singular conduct at the door on the afternoon when she had gone to the house with Trenton. And that seemed long ago, hidden by the black wall of an impenetrable past.
Miss Reynolds called for her at Shipley’s at the closing hour and greeted her as though nothing had happened. She had been summoned to Baltimore on business, she explained. She talked in her brisk fashion throughout the dinner,—of impersonal matters, not mentioning the Trentons at all until they were settled in the living room.
“After all, I think I prefer plain bread-and-butter people—plain folks. A woman traveling with a maid and pretending to be keen about poor suffering humanity seems to me a good deal of a joke. Mrs. Trenton did one thing for me though and I ought to be grateful for that,—she sent me scampering back to the conservatives! I’d been just a little infected with some of these new ideas, but after having that woman in my house two days and hearing her talk and seeing how fussy she is about her personal comfort, I’m for hanging on to the old fogy notions a while longer.”
As Miss Reynolds continued her dissection of Mrs. Trenton’s social program, Grace felt suddenly a strong impulse to tell her friend the whole story of her acquaintance with Trenton. In a way Miss Reynolds had a right to know. She waited, wondering how she could begin and what her friend would say, when Miss Reynolds said in her characteristically abrupt fashion:
“Look here, little girl, you’ve got something on your mind; you haven’t been listening to me at all! You needn’t be afraid of me; I’m a queer old person but sometimes I do understand. I wouldn’t force your confidence; you know that,—but—why you dear child!”
Grace’s eyes had filled with tears. Miss Reynolds crossed to her quickly.
“How clumsy I am! I wouldn’t hurt you for worlds, dear!”