He had left a paper
on the car seat. It was the Star. Fanny crumpled it,
childishly, and kicked it under the seat. She took off her
hat, arranged her belongings, and sat back with eyes closed.
After a few moments she opened them, fished about under the
seat for the crumpled copy of the Star, and read it,
turning at once to his column. She thought it was a very
unpretentious thing, that column, and yet so full of
insight, and sagacity, and whimsical humor. Not a guffaw in
it, but a smile in every fifth line. She wondered if those
years of illness, and loneliness, with weeks of reading, and
tramping, and climbing in the Colorado mountains had kept
him strangely young, or made him strangely old.
She welcomed the hours that lay between New York and
Chicago. They would give her an opportunity to digest the
events of the past ten days. In her systematic mind she
began to range them in the order of their importance. Horn
& Udell came first, of course, and then the line of
maternity dresses she had selected to take the place of the
hideous models carried under Slosson's regime.
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