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.
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