"You'll see,"
said she, her face stern and bitter once more.
A maidservant descended the steps. "Madam Bowker has come,"
announced she, "and is asking for you, Miss Rita."
A look that could come only from a devil temper flashed into
Margaret's hazel eyes. "Tell her I'm out."
"She saw you from the window."
Margaret debated. Said Lucia, "When she comes so soon after lunch
she's always in a frightful mood. She comes then to make a row
because, without her after-lunch nap, she's hardly human and can
be more--more fiendish."
"I'll not see her," declared Margaret.
"Oh, yes, you will," said Lucia. "Grandmother always has her way."
Margaret turned to the maid. "Tell her I had just gone to my room
with a raging headache."
The maid departed. Margaret made a detour, entered the house by
the kitchen door and went up to her room. She wrenched off blouse
and skirt, got into a dressing sacque and let down her thick black
hair. The headache was now real, so upsetting to digestion had
been the advent of Madam Bowker, obviously on mischief bent. "She
transforms me into a raging devil," thought Margaret, staring at
her fiercely sullen countenance in the mirror of the dressing
table.
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