"That's the sun," explained Marian, panting up the steps.
They waited with Grandmother until a bus lumbered to a halt, and they could wave her off down the Drive.
Charles came into the hall as they entered, clattering skates and duck.
"Hello!" He pinched Letty's cheek. "Where you been?" He moved close to Catherine and continued, in a confidential undertone, "I thought you'd be here. I brought Miss Partridge in. Don't you want her to stay to dinner?"
Catherine, with a swift glance at the disheveled group, and a swifter consideration of food--what had she told Flora to prepare?--shrugged.
"Of course," she said. She concealed a secret grin at the relief which ran over Charles's nonchalance. In the old days--how long ago!--one of her most sacred lares had been just that, that Charles should feel free as air about bringing any one in at any time. What was home for? But with three children, perhaps she burned less incense at that altar. She was moving toward the door of the living room as she thought.
"Here's my wife and family, Miss Partridge."
"I am glad you waited for us." Catherine disengaged herself from Letty's fingers and went to meet the woman who was rising from the window. "I have wished to meet you." Catherine smiled as she spoke; her smile touched her face with a subtle irradiance, charming, completely personal. She's younger than I had supposed, Catherine was thinking, and quite different.
"Dr. Hammond urged me to wait." Her voice was clear and hard, like a highly polished instrument. Her manner was as cool and detached as the long white hand she extended. "And this is the family?"
"Letitia, Marian, and Spencer," announced Charles. Catherine watched them make their decorous greetings with a little flicker of pride. Sometimes Marian had ridiculous fits of shyness and wouldn't curtsey. "You'll have to test them, Miss Partridge," Charles went on. "See if my paternal bias misled me in my tests. Their I.Q.'s seem satisfactory."
"Of course they would!" Miss Partridge's smile lifted her short upper lip from a row of even teeth so shining that they looked transparent. "Such a handful must keep you busy, Mrs. Hammond. You've just come in from the country, haven't you?"
"Good Lord!" thought Catherine. "I'm to be treated like an adoring mother." Her level glance met the dark brown eyes for an instant; she felt a queer clatter, as if she had struck metal. Aloud she said, "Won't you have dinner with us, Miss Partridge? I should enjoy hearing your side of all these new schemes."