“Well, I must go,” she declared.
“Wait a moment,” Charlotte said again. Her voice was so dry and strange that after she had spoken she paused to moisten her lips. Her limbs trembled, and in the glass door which she had opened against the wall she could see the ashen whiteness of her face.
Nettie turned, and the two women confronted each other, each holding her child.
Charlotte put a hand up to her throat. “I have money I could give you,” she offered. “Not his, my own.”
The other shook her head. “Oh, I couldn’t,” she exclaimed. “Anyway, I don’t need it. I’ve saved up a good deal. And you’ve done better than give me money; you’ve been kind to me.” She put out her hand with a little appealing gesture and took Charlotte’s, which lay cold in it.
“You’d better go,” Charlotte broke out. “You’ll meet him coming home if you wait any longer. Here; I’ll tell you how to go a roundabout way.”
She walked out on to the piazza and led the way down the steps and round to the back of the house, where she stood giving short, sharp directions, when across her hurried words came Blake’s voice calling from the front:
“Charlotte! Charlotte! Where are you and Hope?”
For the first time since they had lived together Blake had come home before his hour.
The two women looked at each other. Charlotte pointed to the path which hid itself quickly in the shelter of an orchard. “Run,” she whispered. “I’ll keep him in the house.”