No one knew Mrs. Thropp's cheapness of appearance better than she did. A woman may grow shoddy and careless, but she rarely grows oblivious of her uncomeliness. She will rather cherish it as the final cruelty of circumstances. Mrs. Thropp was keenly alive to the effect it would have on Dyckman if Kedzie introduced her and Adna as the encumbrances on her beauty.
Adna, hearing the door-bell and Dyckman's entrance, returned to the living-room from the bathroom, where he had taken refuge. He stood in the hall now behind the puzzled Dyckman.
There was a dreadful silence for a moment. Jim spoke, shyly:
“Hello, Anita! How are you?”
“Hello, Jim!” Kedzie stammered. “This is—”
“I'm the janitor's wife,” said Mrs. Thropp. “My husband had to come up to see about the worter not running in the bathroom, and I came along to see Miss—the young lady. She's been awful good to me. Well, I'll be gettin' along. Good night, miss. Good night, sir.”
To save herself, she could not think of Kedzie's screen name. To save her daughter's future, she disowned her. She pushed past Dyckman, and silencing the stupefied Adna with a glare, swept him out through the dining-room into the kitchen.
It amazed Mrs. Thropp to find a kitchen so many flights up-stairs. The ingenuity of the devices, the step-saving cupboard, the dry ice-box with its coils of cold-air pipes, the gas-stove, the electric appliances, were like wonderful new toys to her.
Adna was as comfortable as a cow in a hammock, and she would have sent him away, but his hat was in the hall and she dared not go for it. Besides, she wanted to wait long enough to learn the outcome of Kedzie's adventure with Dyckman.
As soon as he was alone with Kedzie, Jim had taken her into his arms. She blushed with an unwonted timidity in a new sense of the forbiddenness of her presence there.