They had hardly cleared away the remains of a hasty supper, when there
came the first clang from the front-door chimes. To Norman's relief,
Tansy had accepted without questioning his rather clumsy explanation of
why he had gotten home so late. There was something puzzling, though,
about her serenity these last two days. She was usually much sharper,
and more curious. But of course he had been careful to hide disturbing
events from her, and he ought only to be glad her nerves were in such
good shape.
"Dearest! It's been ages since we've seen you!" Mrs. Carr embraced
Tansy in a matronly fashion. "How are you? How are you?" The question
sounded peculiarly eager and incisive. Norman put it down to typical
Hempnell gush. "Oh, dear, I'm afraid I've got a cinder in my eye," Mrs.
Carr continued. "The wind's getting quite fierce."
"Gusty," said Professor Carr of the mathematics department, showing
obvious but harmless delight at finding the right word. He was a little
man with red cheeks and a white Vandyke, as innocent and absent-minded
as college professors are supposed to be, who gave the impression
of residing permanently in a special paradise of transcendental and
transfinite numbers.
"It seems to have gone away now," said Mrs. Carr, waving aside Tansy's
handkerchief and experimentally blinking her eyes, which looked
unpleasantly naked and birdlike until she replaced her thick glasses.
"Oh, that must be the others," she added, as the chimes sounded. "Isn't
it marvelous that everyone at Hempnell is so punctual?"
As Norman started for the front door he imagined for one crazy moment
that someone must be whirling a bull-roarer outside, until he realized
it could only be the rising wind living up to Professor Carr's
description of it.
He was confronted by Evelyn Sawtelle's angular form, wind whipping
her black coat against her legs. Her equally angular face, with its
shoe-button eyes, was thrust toward his own.
"Let us in, or it'll blow us in," she said. Like most of her attempts
at coy or facetious humor, it did not come off, perhaps because she
made it sound so stupidly grim.
She entered, with Hervey in tow, and made for Tansy.
"My dear, how are you? Whatever have you been doing with yourself?"
Again he was struck by the eager and meaningful tone of the question.
For a moment he wondered whether the women had somehow gotten an
inkling of Tansy's eccentricity, and the recent crisis. But Mrs.
Sawtelle was so voice-conscious that she was always emphasizing things
the wrong way.
* * * * *
There was a noisy flurry of greetings. Totem made a squeaky noise and
darted out of the way of the crowd of human beings. Mrs. Carr's silvery
voice rose above the rest.
"Oh, Professor Sawtelle, I want to tell you how _much_
we all appreciated your talk on city planning. It was truly
_significant_!" Sawtelle writhed, grinning in a flustered way.