“I hope not. It would be awful to go through a time like this again.”
Ruth reassured her, though it entailed a certain inconsistency on her part. She had a true woman’s contempt for consistency.
“Of course you won’t have to go through it again. Bailey will be careful in future not to—not to do whatever it is that he has done.”
She felt that the end of her inspiring speech was a little weak, but she did not see how she could mend it. Her talk with Mr. Meadows on the telephone had left her as vague as before as to the actual details of what had been happening that day in Wall Street. She remembered stray remarks of his about bulls, and she had gathered that something had happened to something which Mr. Meadows called G.R.D.’s, which had evidently been at the root of the trouble; but there her grasp of high finance ended.
Sybil, however, was not exigent. She brightened at Ruth’s words as if they had been an authoritative pronouncement from an expert.
“Bailey is sure to do right,” she said. “I think I’ll creep in and see if he’s still asleep.”
Ruth, left alone on the porch, fell into a pleasant train of thought. There was something in her mental attitude which amused her. She wondered if anybody had ever received the announcement of financial ruin in quite the same way before. Yet to her this attitude seemed the only one possible.
How simple everything was now! She could go to Kirk and, as she had said to Sybil, start again. The golden barrier between them had vanished. One day had wiped out all the wretchedness of the last year. They were back where they had started, with all the accumulated experience of those twelve months to help them steer their little ship clear of the rocks on its new voyage.
She was roused from her dream by the sound of an automobile drawing up at the door. A voice that she recognised called her name. She went quickly down the steps.