"I've got the telephone together and
have enough left over to make another. Where do you suppose
Harbison hides the tools? I'm working with a corkscrew and two
palette knives."
I heard nothing more of the trouble that night. Max went to Jim
about it, and Jim said angrily that only a fool would interfere
between a man and his wife--wives. Whereupon Max retorted that a
fool and his wives were soon parted, and left him. The two
principals were coldly civil to each other, and smaller issues
were lost as the famine grew more and more insistent. For famine
it was.
They worked the rest of the evening, but the telephone refused to
revive and every one was starving. Individually our pride was at
low ebb, but collectively it was still formidable. So we sat
around and Jim played Grieg with the soft stops on, and Aunt
Selina went to bed. The weather had changed, and it was sleeting,
but anything was better than the drawing room. I was in a mood to
battle with the elements or to cry--or both--so I slipped out,
while Dal was reciting "Give me three grains of corn, mother,"
threw somebody's overcoat over my shoulders, put on a man's soft
hat--Jim's I think--and went up to the roof.
It was dark in the third floor hall, and I had to feel my way to
the foot of the stairs. I went up quietly, and turned the knob of
the door to the roof.
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