“And we could squeeze the two girls into one room, or perhaps only bring Margaret, and put out the whole of the wash. Basil!” she almost shrieked, “it isn't to be thought of!”
He retorted, “I'm not thinking of it, my dear.”
Fulkerson came in just before they started for Mrs. March's train, to find out what had become of them, he said, and to see whether they had got anything to live in yet.
“Not a thing,” she said. “And I'm just going back to Boston, and leaving Mr. March here to do anything he pleases about it. He has 'carte blanche.'”
“But freedom brings responsibility, you know, Fulkerson, and it's the same as if I'd no choice. I'm staying behind because I'm left, not because I expect to do anything.”
“Is that so?” asked Fulkerson. “Well, we must see what can be done. I supposed you would be all settled by this time, or I should have humped myself to find you something. None of those places I gave you amounts to anything?”
“As much as forty thousand others we've looked at,” said Mrs. March. “Yes, one of them does amount to something. It comes so near being what we want that I've given Mr. March particular instructions not to go near it.”
She told him about Mrs. Grosvenor Green and her flats, and at the end he said:
“Well, well, we must look out for that. I'll keep an eye on him, Mrs. March, and see that he doesn't do anything rash, and I won't leave him till he's found just the right thing. It exists, of course; it must in a city of eighteen hundred thousand people, and the only question is where to find it. You leave him to me, Mrs. March; I'll watch out for him.”
Fulkerson showed some signs of going to the station when he found they were not driving, but she bade him a peremptory good-bye at the hotel door.