Jones turned and confronted his wife, and for a time words refused to come.
"Well, this is a little too much! Now think of an unknown voice barking at me to go out into a storm like this and tell the Goodsons that their daughter will not be at home to-night!"
The Goodsons lived just six squares away.
"And what will you do, dear? Why didn't you say plainly that you would not and could not go out into a storm like this--that they must send a messenger?"
"They shut me off without giving me time to answer."
"Well, call them up. Call them up at once."
"Jane, please have some sense. How do I know where Miss Goodson has gadded off to? How do I know what number to call up?"
"Oh, I'll have to. They are friends, and if they are expecting that girl of theirs home to-night and she doesn't come Mrs. Goodson will go out of her mind."
So Jones drove himself forth, clad in righteous indignation and a waterproof coat. The cold rain lashed him and the wind belabored his umbrella, and he was more than once obliged to pause under friendly porches to get his breath. At last the home of the Goodsons was reached, and spent and weary he staggered up the steps. Goodson himself opened the door.
"Hello, Jones, you're no fair weather friend indeed. Come in, come in."
"No, I'm too wet," he answered, pointedly (and he felt like adding "and too mad"). "I only came to tell you that Miss Goodson won't be at home to-night."
"My daughter! She is at home. Don't you hear her playing on the piano now? Come into the vestibule, anyway."
Jones walked in, with the rain streaming from his coat.
"Katey!" called Mr. Goodson to his wife. "Here is Jones come to say that Julia won't be home to-night."
"What?" demanded Mrs. Goodson, appearing in the hall and regarding Jones as if he were a mild sort of lunatic; "_Julia is_ at home."
"Well, I don't understand it," said Jones, plaintively. "I was rung up half an hour ago, and asked to come and tell you that your daughter wouldn't be at home on account of the storm."
"And do you mean to say that you stand ready to turn out at all hours and deliver messages free of cost?" cried Goodson.
"Don't compliment me too freely, Goodson, I can't take in much more; I'm soaked as it is."
Mrs. Goodson stood thinking. "Who could have been meant? Oh, I've just thought! It must be that Mrs. Goodson who sews for Mrs. Jones and me. And she has a daughter--a typewriter down town--and she has friends living in the suburbs. She has doubtless gone there to dinner and concluded to stay all night. But she lives just around the corner from you."