“Shall I see you to-morrow?”
“I don’t know,” said Mamise.
She gave him her hand. He pressed it in his two palms 242 and shook his head. She shook her head. They were both rebuking the bad behavior of the fates.
Mamise trudged homeward––or at least houseward. She was in another of her irresolute states, and irresolution is the most disappointing of all the moods to the irresolute ones and all the neighbors. It was irresolution that made “Hamlet” a five-act play, and only a Shakespeare could have kept him endurable.
Mamise was becoming unendurable to herself. When she got to her cottage she found it as dismal as an empty ice-box. When she had started the fire going she had nothing else to do. In sheer desperation she decided to answer a few letters. There was an old one from Polly Widdicombe. She read it again. It contained the usual invitation to come back to reason and Washington.
Just for something positive to do she resolved to go. There was a tonic in the mere act of decision. She wrote a letter. She felt that she could not wait so long as its answer would require. She resolved to send a telegram.
This meant hustling out into the cold again, but it was something to do, somewhere to go, some excuse for a hope.
Polly telegraphed:
Come without fail dying to see you bring along a scuttle of coal if you can.
Mamise showed Davidge the telegram. He was very plucky about letting her go. For her sake he was so glad that he concealed his own loneliness. That made her underestimate it. He confirmed her belief that he was glad to be rid of her by making a lark of her departure. He filled an old suit-case with coal and insisted on her taking it. The porter who lugged it along the platform at Washington gave Mamise a curious look. He supposed that this was one of those suit-cases full of bottled goods that were coming into Washington in such multitudes since the town had been decreed absolutely dry. He shook it and was surprised when he failed to hear the glug-glug of liquor.