Little Mrs. Bailey was waiting for her on the platform when she got out
of the train. Her face was drawn and miserable. She looked like a
beaten kitten. She hugged Ruth hysterically.
"Oh, my dear, I'm so glad you've come. He's better, but it has been
awful. The doctors have had to _fight_ him to keep him in bed. He
was crazy to get to town. He kept saying over and over again that he
must be at the office. They gave him something, and he was asleep when
I left the house."
She began to cry helplessly. The fates had not bestowed upon Sybil
Bannister the same care in the matter of education for times of crisis
which they had accorded to Steve's Mamie. Her life till now had been
sheltered and unruffled, and disaster, swooping upon her, had found her
an easy victim.
She was trying to be brave, but her powers of resistance were small
like her body. She clung to Ruth as a child clings to its mother. Ruth,
as she tried to comfort her, felt curiously old. It occurred to her
with a suggestion almost of grotesqueness that she and Sybil had been
debutantes in the same season.
They walked up to the house. The summer cottage which Bailey had taken
was not far from the station. On the way, in the intervals of her sobs,
Sybil told Ruth the disjointed story of what had happened.
Bailey had not been looking well for some days.
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