He had told Schwitter he would be at the hospital, and the message found him there. Wilson was holding his own, conscious now and making a hard fight. The message from Schwitter was very brief:--
“Something has happened, and Tillie wants you. I don't like to trouble you again, but she--wants you.”
K. was rather gray of face by that time, having had no sleep and little food since the day before. But he got into the rented machine again--its rental was running up; he tried to forget it--and turned it toward Hillfoot. But first of all he drove back to the Street, and walked without ringing into Mrs. McKee's.
Neither a year's time nor Mrs. McKee's approaching change of state had altered the “mealing” house. The ticket-punch still lay on the hat-rack in the hall. Through the rusty screen of the back parlor window one viewed the spiraea, still in need of spraying. Mrs. McKee herself was in the pantry, placing one slice of tomato and three small lettuce leaves on each of an interminable succession of plates.
“I've got a car at the door,” he announced, “and there's nothing so extravagant as an empty seat in an automobile. Will you take a ride?”
Mrs. McKee agreed. Being of the class who believe a boudoir cap the ideal headdress for a motor-car, she apologized for having none.
“If I'd known you were coming I would have borrowed a cap,” she said. “Miss Tripp, third floor front, has a nice one. If you'll take me in my toque--”
K. said he'd take her in her toque, and waited with some anxiety, having not the faintest idea what a toque was. He was not without other anxieties. What if the sight of Tillie's baby did not do all that he expected? Good women could be most cruel. And Schwitter had been very vague. But here K. was more sure of himself: the little man's voice had expressed as exactly as words the sense of a bereavement that was not a grief.
He was counting on Mrs. McKee's old fondness for the girl to bring them together. But, as they neared the house with its lanterns and tables, its whitewashed stones outlining the drive, its small upper window behind which Joe was waiting for night, his heart failed him, rather. He had a masculine dislike for meddling, and yet--Mrs. McKee had suddenly seen the name in the wooden arch over the gate: “Schwitter's.”