Mr. Pantin thought he heard the gate slam and peered out through the dead wild-cucumber vines which framed the bow window to see Mrs. Toomey coming up the only cement walk in Prouty. He immediately thrust his stockinged feet back in his comfortable Romeos preparatory to opening the door, but before he got up he stooped and looked again, searchingly. Mr. Pantin was endowed with a gift that was like a sixth sense, which enabled him to detect a borrower as far as his excellent eyesight could see one. This intuition, combined with experience, had been developed to the point of uncanniness. No borrower, however adroit, could hope to conceal from Mr. Pantin for a single instant the real purpose of his call by irrelevant talk and solicitous inquiries about his health. In the present instance it did not require great acumen to guess that something urgent had brought Mrs. Toomey out on a day like this, nor any particular keenness to detect the signs of agitation which Mr. Pantin noted in his swift glance. She was coming to borrow--he was as sure of that as though she already had asked, and if any further confirmation were needed, her unnatural gayety when he admitted her and the shortness of her breath finished that.
It availed Mrs. Toomey nothing to tell herself that Mrs. Pantin was her best friend, and that what she was asking was merely a matter of business--the sort of thing that Mr. Pantin was doing every day. Her heart beat ridiculously and she was rather shocked to hear herself laughing shrilly at Mr. Pantin's banal inquiry as to whether she had not "nearly blown off." He added in some haste: "Priscilla's in the kitchen."
Mrs. Pantin looked up in surprise at her caller's entrance.
"How perfectly sweet of you to come out a day like this!" she chirped. "You'll excuse me if I go on getting dinner? We only have two meals a day when we don't exercise. This wind--isn't it dreadful? I haven't been out of the house for a week."
She placed two rolls in the warming oven and broke three eggs into a bowl.
"Abram and I are so fond of omelette," she said, as the egg-beater whirred. "Tell me," she beamed brightly upon Mrs. Toomey, "what have you been doing with yourself?"
"Priscilla--Prissy--" Mrs. Toomey caught her breath--"I've been miserable--and that's the truth!"
"Why, my dear!" The egg-beater stopped. "Aren't you well? No wonder--I'm as nervous as a witch myself." The egg-beater whirred again encouragingly. "You must use your will power--you mustn't allow yourself to be affected by these external things."