“Most assuredly. I expect you to talk to her! Come with me.”
Una followed abjectly, and the matron seemed well pleased with her reformation of this wayward young woman. Her voice was curiously anemic, however, as she rapped on a bedroom door and called, “Oh, Mrs. Lawrence!”
A husky, capable voice within, “Yeah, what is’t?”
“It’s Mrs. Fike, deary. I think I have a room-mate for you.”
“Well, you wait’ll I get something on, will you!”
Mrs. Fike waited. She waited two minutes. She looked at a wrist-watch in a leather band while she tapped her sensibly clad foot. She tried again: “We’re waiting, deary!”
There was no answer from within, and it was two minutes more before the door was opened.
Una was conscious of a room pleasant with white-enameled woodwork; a denim-covered couch and a narrow, prim brass bed, a litter of lingerie and sheets of newspaper; and, as the dominating center of it all, a woman of thirty, tall, high-breasted, full-faced, with a nose that was large but pleasant, black eyes that were cool and direct and domineering—Mrs. Esther Lawrence.
“You kept us waiting so long,” complained Mrs. Fike.
Mrs. Lawrence stared at her as though she were an impudent servant. She revolved on Una, and with a self-confident kindliness in her voice, inquired, “What’s your name, child?”