"Ten—fifteen minutes ago, when I got up. I found my lamp out of oil, and I went to her room to borrow hers. She didn't answer, and I went in. She wasn't there. Her coat and cap are gone. How she got out without waking us!"
He turned to a window, peering through a little bare spot in the pane close to the sash. "Looks like a rough day," he said, quietly, as though trying to disguise the import of his words . . . . . . . . "She's been melancholy of late; trying to hide it, but I could tell . . . . . . . My God, she may have been gone for hours!"
"Then it's time we were after her!" I exclaimed, a sudden impulse for action bringing me out of my stupor. I shoved my burning porridge to the back of the stove and rushed to my room to complete dressing. And in my head was pounding one word, Spoof—Spoof—Spoof!
"Where?" Jack demanded, from the door of my room. "What's your guess?"
But I was already becoming an artist, that artist that Jean so eagerly sought in me.
"Just two places," I said. "She's gone to Mrs. Alton's or to Mrs. Brown's. I don't think she would go to Lucy Burke's—didn't know them so well."
Jack's look of relief was pathetic. I had always thought of Jack as being in some way my superior, born to rule while I was born to obey. Suddenly I found him a child in my hands.
"You think so?" he grasped at my words. "You think—that's—where she's gone?"
"Nothing surer. We talked a good deal about Mrs. Alton yesterday." I added, out of the fulness of my invention, "and she said how lonely Mrs. Alton must be, and that we ought to go over and see her. She's started worrying over that in the night and it's got on her mind—upset her a bit. Still, it might be Brown's. The danger is that she may be lost in this storm. Hustle back and finish dressing, and then strike for Mrs. Alton's. I'll try Brown's first, then Jake's, then Burke's. Hustle!"
It was new business for me to order Jack, but he needed ordering to keep him from utter futility at that moment. I gave his hand a squeeze and thrust him out of the door.