There was a knock on the door, followed by her brother’s voice.
“Claudia, let me come in. I must speak to you.”
Johnson looked at her, and for a moment Claudia’s hands clenched themselves in helpless rage at the folly of her brother. “Let him come in,” she said shortly, “and send me up my breakfast!”
Johnson opened the door and Jack came in, his face rather pitiable in its weakness and worry. He looked like a puppy that has lost its way. He was as smartly dressed and as well-groomed in person as usual—nothing short of an earthquake would have made him regardless of his attire, and then one felt he would have been resurrected trying to put his tie straight—but his usual placid expression of serene content with himself and that state of life into which Providence had pleased to call him was gone.
He looked at Claudia rather helplessly and yet appealingly, and some of the hardness of her glance melted. After all, it was the same silly old good-natured Jack.
“Johnson, wait a minute. Have you had some breakfast?”
“Yes—no—you never can get anything to eat at the flat.... I should like some coffee, Claudia. I think it might pull me together if it was strong and very hot.”
He came to the bedside and sat down rather heavily in a pink-cushioned chair. Mechanically he found his cigarette-case and opened it.
“Oh! I beg your pardon, old girl. I forgot it was your bedroom. It’s something to do.... You know all about it!”