“Oh, don’t they, indeed!  Well, I’ve lived longer than sixteen and a half years and I’ve noticed that it’s the up-to-the-minute dame that gets away with it and holds onto it every time, just the same.  And any woman silly enough to work the rag-bag game when her husband can afford seven yards of taffeta and a Butterick pattern is a fool!”

Claire knew women who looked dowdy on dress-parade and yet managed to be quite charming in their own houses.  She was wondering whether this might not be Mrs. Flint’s case; anyway, she had hoped for a chance to decide this point, and now Mrs. Flint was not at home.

As she settled into her matting-covered seat in the train she began to wonder just who would be home at the Flint establishment.  And she thought suddenly of the disagreeable emphasis that Mrs. Richards had seen fit to give the fact that Mrs. Flint was bound cityward.  At this stage she became lost in discovering so many points of contact between Mrs. Richards and her cousin, Miss Munch.  Then the train started with a quick lurch, and a view of the rapidly darkening landscape claimed her utterly.

Claire always took a childish delight in watching the panorama of the countryside unroll swiftly before the space-conquering flight of a train.  And to-night the quick close of the December day warned her to make the most of her opportunity.  The wind was whipping the upper reaches of the bay into a shallow fury, and the water in turn was beating against the slimy mud and swallowing it up in gray, futile anger.  This part of the ride just out of Sausalito was always more or less depressing unless a combination of full tide and vivid sunshine gave its muddy stretches the enlivening grace of sky-blue reflections.  Worm-eaten and tottering piles, abandoned hulks, half-swamped skiffs, all the water-logged dissolution of stagnant shore lines the world over, flashed by, to be succeeded by the fresher green of channel-cut marshes.  The hills were wind-swept, huddling their scant oak covering into the protecting folds of shallow canons.  At intervals, clumps of eucalyptus-trees banded together or drew out in long, thin, soldier-like lines.

Presently it began to rain.  There was no preliminary patter, but the storm broke suddenly, hurling great gray drops of moisture against the windows.  Claire withdrew from any further attempt to watch the whirling landscape.  It was now quite dark, the short December day dying even more suddenly under a black pall of lowering clouds.

She began to have distinctly uncomfortable thoughts about her visit to the Flints’.  But the more uncomfortable her thoughts became, the more reason she brought to bear for conquering them.  Surely one was not to be persuaded into a panic by any such person as Mrs. Richards!  And by the time the brakeman announced the train’s approach to Yolanda, Claire had recovered her common sense.  What of it if Mrs. Flint had gone to town?  There must be other women in the household—­at least a maid.  It was absurd!  The train stopped and Claire got off.