What she did was to have breakfast. During this hasty meal she thought things over--all her hard-won practicality at work in her brain. Then she put on her befeathered hat and her white gloves, a second-best pair of shoes, and went out and along the street, and into the nearest drug store. Here she entered the telephone booth and asked for the number that was printed on Graham's note. By that time it was just after nine o'clock. Having complied with the sharp request to slip the necessary nickel into the slot, an impatient voice recited the name of the firm. "I want to speak to Mr. Graham," she said. "No such name--? Well, keep your 'air on, Mister. I may be a client--a millionaire's wife--for all you know. I'm asking for Mr. Graham and as 'e's a friend of mine, and probably your boss, I'm not bothering about his surname. You know that as well as I do--Do I mean Mr. Graham Guthrie? Well, yes. Who else should I mean?" She gave a chuckle of triumph. "All right! I'll 'old on." In a moment or two there was another voice on the telephone. "How d'you do?" she said. "I'm holding a letter signed by you, to 'Dear Peter,'--Ah! I thought that would make you jump--It doesn't matter what my name is. What's that--? Yes, I _do_ know where he is. I've been looking after 'im all night. Come up to my place right away and I'll be there to meet you. Dear Peter is far from well." She gave her address, and feeling immensely relieved left the box. But before she left the store she treated herself to a large box of talcum powder and a medium-sized bottle of her favorite scent, paying the bill with Peter's money. She considered herself to be fully justified. On the way home she dropped into a delicatessen shop and bought some sausages, a bottle of pickles, a queer German salad of raw herring chopped up with carrots and onions, and carried these away with her. On her way up-stairs--the bald, hard stairs--she was greeted by a half-dressed person whose hair was in curl-papers and who had opened her door to pick up a daily paper which lay outside. "Hello, Miss Pope! Anything doing?" "Yes," said Nellie Pope, "the market's improving," and she laughed and went on. Peter was still lying inert when she bent over him once more. She felt his head again, put the covers about his shoulders, pulled the blind more closely over the window, and after having put the food away returned to make up her face. She wasn't going to be caught looking what she called "second-rate" by this Mr. Graham Guthrie when he came. There being no need to practice rigid economy at that moment, she gave herself a glass of beer and sat down to pass the time with her magazine, in which life was regarded through very rosy spectacles. When finally she opened the door, in response to a loud and insistent ring, her answer to Graham's abrupt question: "Is my brother _here_?" was "Yes; why shouldn't he be?" She didn't like the tone. The word "here" was underlined in an unnecessarily unpleasant manner. XII