“I am very sorry you have made this decision,” he said. “Miss Innes, Mrs. Fitzhugh tells me Louise Armstrong is with you.”
“Has she been informed of this—double bereavement?”
“Not yet,” I said. “She has been very ill; perhaps to-night she can be told.”
“It is very sad; very sad,” he said. “I have a telegram for her, Mrs. Innes. Shall I send it out?”
“Better open it and read it to me,” I suggested. “If it is important, that will save time.”
There was a pause while Mr. Harton opened the telegram. Then he read it slowly, judicially.
“‘Watch for Nina Carrington. Home Monday. Signed F. L. W.’”
“Hum!” I said. “‘Watch for Nina Carrington. Home Monday.’ Very well, Mr. Harton, I will tell her, but she is not in condition to watch for any one.”
“Well, Miss Innes, if you decide to—er—relinquish the lease, let me know,” the lawyer said.
“I shall not relinquish it,” I replied, and I imagined his irritation from the way he hung up the receiver.
I wrote the telegram down word for word, afraid to trust my memory, and decided to ask Doctor Stewart how soon Louise might be told the truth. The closing of the Traders’ Bank I considered unnecessary for her to know, but the death of her stepfather and stepbrother must be broken to her soon, or she might hear it in some unexpected and shocking manner.
Doctor Stewart came about four o’clock, bringing his leather satchel into the house with a great deal of care, and opening it at the foot of the stairs to show me a dozen big yellow eggs nesting among the bottles.
“Real eggs,” he said proudly. “None of your anemic store eggs, but the real thing—some of them still warm. Feel them! Egg-nog for Miss Louise.”
He was beaming with satisfaction, and before he left, he insisted on going back to the pantry and making an egg-nog with his own hands. Somehow, all the time he was doing it, I had a vision of Doctor Willoughby, my nerve specialist in the city, trying to make an egg-nog. I wondered if he ever prescribed anything so plebeian—and so delicious. And while Doctor Stewart whisked the eggs he talked.
“I said to Mrs. Stewart,” he confided, a little red in the face from the exertion, “after I went home the other day, that you would think me an old gossip, for saying what I did about Walker and Miss Louise.”