"Please, sir!" she burst out. "See if Di Deacon has put her name on your book."
Her appeal was tremendous, compelling. The young clerk listened to her, showed her where to look in the register. When only strange names and strange writing presented themselves there, he said:
"Tried the parlour?"
And directed her kindly and with his thumb, and in the other hand a pen divorced from his ear for the express purpose.
In crossing the lobby in the hotel at Savannah, Georgia, Lulu's most pressing problem had been to know where to look. But now the idlers in the Hess House lobby did not exist. In time she found the door of the intensely rose-coloured reception room. There, in a fat, rose-coloured chair, beside a cataract of lace curtain, sat Di, alone.
Lulu entered. She had no idea what to say. When Di looked up, started up, frowned, Lulu felt as if she herself were the culprit. She said the first thing that occurred to her:
"I don't believe mamma'll like your taking her nice satchel."
"Well!" said Di, exactly as if she had been at home. And superadded: "My goodness!" And then cried rudely: "What are you here for?"
"For you," said Lulu. "You—you—you'd ought not to be here, Di."
"What's that to you?" Di cried.