Tessie stood a moment, breathing painfully, sobbingly.  Then, with a little instinctive gesture, she patted her hair, tidied her blouse, and walked uncertainly toward the house, up the steps to the door.  She stood there a moment, swaying slightly.  Somebody’d be there.  The light.  The woman who cooked for them or the man who took care of the place.  Somebody’d—­

She knocked at the door feebly.  She’d tell ’em she had lost her way and got scared when it began to get dark.  She knocked again, louder now.  Footsteps.  She braced herself and even arranged a crooked smile.  The door opened wide.  Old Man Hatton!

She looked up at him, terror and relief in her face.  He peered over his glasses at her.  “Who is it?” Tessie had not known, somehow, that his face was so kindly.

Tessie’s carefully planned story crumbled into nothingness.  “It’s me!” she whimpered.  “It’s me!”

He reached out and put a hand on her arm and drew her inside.

“Angie!  Angie!  Here’s a poor little kid....”

Tessie clutched frantically at the last crumbs of her pride.  She tried to straighten, to smile with her old bravado.  What was that story she had planned to tell?

“Who is it, dad?  Who...?” Angie Hatton came into the hallway.  She stared at Angie.  Then:  “Why, my dear!” she said.  “My dear!  Come in here.”

Angie Hatton!  Tessie began to cry weakly, her face buried in Angie Hatton’s expensive blouse.  Tessie remembered later that she had felt no surprise at the act.

“There, there!” Angie Hatton was saying.  “Just poke up the fire, dad.  And get something from the dining room.  Oh, I don’t know.  To drink, you know.  Something....”

Then Old Man Hatton stood over her, holding a small glass to her lips.  Tessie drank it obediently, made a wry little face, coughed, wiped her eyes, and sat up.  She looked from one to the other, like a trapped little animal.  She put a hand to her tousled head.

“That’s all right,” Angie Hatton assured her.  “You can fix it after a while.”

There they were, the three of them:  Old Man Hatton with his back to the fire, looking benignly down upon her; Angie seated, with some knitting in her hands, as if entertaining bedraggled, tearstained young ladies at dusk were an everyday occurrence; Tessie, twisting her handkerchief in a torment of embarrassment.  But they asked no questions, these two.  They evinced no curiosity about this dishevelled creature who had flung herself in upon their decent solitude.

Tessie stared at the fire.  She looked up at Old Man Hatton’s face and opened her lips.  She looked down and shut them again.  Then she flashed a quick look at Angie, to see if she could detect there some suspicion, some disdain.  None.  Angie Hatton looked—­well, Tessie put it to herself, thus:  “She looks like she’d cried till she couldn’t cry no more—­only inside.”