He had given no hint of his altruistic motives in the
hurried scrawl which she had found on the empty cot. He had merely said
that he had taken away William Bannister, but that "it was all right."
Why Steve should imagine that it was all right baffled Mamie. Anything
less all right she had never come across in a lifetime of disconcerting
experiences.
She was aware that things were not as they should be between Ruth and
Kirk, and the spectacle of the broken home had troubled her gentle
heart; but she failed to establish a connection between Kirk's
departure and Steve's midnight raid.
After devoting some ten minutes to steady brainwork she permitted
herself the indulgence of a few tears. She did not often behave in this
shockingly weak way, her role in life hitherto having been that of the
one calm person in a disrupted world. When her father had lost his job,
and the rent was due, and Brother Jim had fallen in the mud to the
detriment of his only suit of clothes, and Brothers Terence and Mike
had developed respectively a sore throat and a funny feeling in the
chest, she had remained dry-eyed and capable. Her father had cried, her
brother Jim had cried, her brother Terence had cried, and her brother
Mike had cried in a manner that made the weeping of the rest of the
family seem like the uncanny stillness of a summer night; but she had
not shed a tear.
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