I'll send you home a steak and some
quinine from the drug store for Albert to take to-night."
Presently Lilly heard the lower door slam. It came down across her
nerves like the descent of a cleaver.
For another hour she sat immovable. A light storm had come up with
summer caprice, thunder without lightning, and a thin fall of rain that
hardly laid the dust. There was a certain whiteness to the gloom,
indicating the sun's readiness to pierce it, but a breeze had sprung up,
fanning the Swiss curtains in against Lilly's cheek, and across the
street she could see her mother's shades fly up and windows open to the
refreshment of it.
At twelve o'clock the telephone rang. It was her husband. "Yes, she was
well. Pouring downtown? Funny. Only a light shower out there. No, the
man had not brought the missing caster for the bedstead. Yes,
six-forty-six, and she would put the steak on at six-twenty. Yes, the
poultry netting had come. Fine. Bathtub stopper. Yes."
For quite a while after this she sat in the hallway, her hand on the
instrument, in the attitude of hanging up the receiver.
She did piddle among her books then, a vagabond little collection of
them.
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