“Yes, Mrs. Robson, maybe you do!  But I’ll bet you never went to such a place without your husband ... and ... with a strange man.”

Mrs. Robson never had, and she would tell Mrs. Finnegan so decidedly.  This always had the effect of switching the subject again and Mrs. Robson found her desire to know the real details of Mrs. Condor’s questionable gaieties offered up on the altar of class loyalty.  For it never occurred to Mrs. Robson to doubt that her social exile had nothing to do with the inherent rights of her position.

When everything else in the way of an irritating program failed to rouse Mrs. Robson’s dignified ire, her neighbor fell back upon the fact that Stillman was a married man.  Mrs. Finnegan really worshiped Mrs. Robson to distraction, but she had a natural combative tendency that was at odds with even her loyalty.

“Mr. Stillman is a married man,” Mrs. Finnegan would insist, doggedly.  “And I don’t approve of married men taking an interest in young girls.  Who knows?—­he may spoil your daughter’s chances.”

This statement always had the effect of dividing Mrs. Robson against herself.  She resented Mrs. Finnegan’s insinuations concerning Stillman, because it was not in her nature to be anything but partizan, and at the same time she was mollified by her neighbor’s recognition of the fact that Claire had such things as chances.  She always managed cleverly at this point by saying, patronizingly: 

“Why, how you talk, Mrs. Finnegan!  Mr. Stillman is just like an old friend.  Not that we’ve known him so long ... but the family, you know ... they’re old-timers.  Everybody knows the Stillmans!  Really one couldn’t want a better friend.”

Thus did Mrs. Robson take meager and colorless realities and expand them into things of blossoming promise.  She was almost creative in the artistry she brought to these transmutations.  In the end she convinced herself of their existence and she was quite sure that Mrs. Finnegan shared equally in the delights of her fancy.

Meanwhile November passed, and the first weeks of December crowded the old year to its death.  November had been shrouded in clammy fogs, but no rain had fallen, and everybody began to have the restless feeling engendered by the usual summer drought in California prolonged beyond its appointed season.  The country and the people needed rain.  Claire, always responsive to the moods of wind and weather, longed for the cleansing flood to descend and wash the dust-drab town colorful again.  She awoke one morning to the delicious thrill of the moisture-laden southeast wind blowing into her room and the warning voice of her mother at her bedroom door calling to her: 

“You’d better put on your thick shoes, Claire!  We’re in for a storm.”

She leaped out of bed joyously and hurried with her dressing.