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      Bunner Sisters, by Edith Wharton
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bunner Sisters, by Edith Wharton

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Bunner Sisters

Author: Edith Wharton

Release Date: July 1, 2008 [EBook #311]
Last Updated: March 8, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUNNER SISTERS ***




Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger





</pre>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h1>
      BUNNER SISTERS
    </h1>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      By Edith Wharton
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h4>
      Scribner's Magazine<br /> 60 (Oct. 1916): 439-58;<br /> 60 (Nov. 1916):
      575-96.
    </h4>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <blockquote>
      <p class="toc">
        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
      </p>
      <p>
        <br />
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_PART1"> <big><b>PART I</b></big> </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII </a>
      </p>
      <p>
        <br />
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_PART"> <big><b>PART II</b></big> </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> VIII </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> IX </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> X </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XI </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XII </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIII </a>
      </p>
    </blockquote>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <h2>
      PART I
    </h2>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      I
    </h2>
    <p>
      In the days when New York's traffic moved at the pace of the drooping
      horse-car, when society applauded Christine Nilsson at the Academy of
      Music and basked in the sunsets of the Hudson River School on the walls of
      the National Academy of Design, an inconspicuous shop with a single
      show-window was intimately and favourably known to the feminine population
      of the quarter bordering on Stuyvesant Square.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a very small shop, in a shabby basement, in a side-street already
      doomed to decline; and from the miscellaneous display behind the
      window-pane, and the brevity of the sign surmounting it (merely “Bunner
      Sisters” in blotchy gold on a black ground) it would have been difficult
      for the uninitiated to guess the precise nature of the business carried on
      within. But that was of little consequence, since its fame was so purely
      local that the customers on whom its existence depended were almost
      congenitally aware of the exact range of “goods” to be found at Bunner
      Sisters'.
    </p>
    <p>
      The house of which Bunner Sisters had annexed the basement was a private
      dwelling with a brick front, green shutters on weak hinges, and a
      dress-maker's sign in the window above the shop. On each side of its
      modest three stories stood higher buildings, with fronts of brown stone,
      cracked and blistered, cast-iron balconies and cat-haunted grass-patches
      behind twisted railings. These houses too had once been private, but now a
      cheap lunchroom filled the basement of one, while the other announced
      itself, above the knotty wistaria that clasped its central balcony, as the
      Mendoza Family Hotel. It was obvious from the chronic cluster of
      refuse-barrels at its area-gate and the blurred surface of its curtainless
      windows, that the families frequenting the Mendoza Hotel were not exacting
      in their tastes; though they doubtless indulged in as much fastidiousness
      as they could afford to pay for, and rather more than their landlord
      thought they had a right to express.
    </p>
    <p>
      These three houses fairly exemplified the general character of the street,
      which, as it stretched eastward, rapidly fell from shabbiness to squalor,
      with an increasing frequency of projecting sign-boards, and of swinging
      doors that softly shut or opened at the touch of red-nosed men and pale
      little girls with broken jugs. The middle of the street was full of
      irregular depressions, well adapted to retain the long swirls of dust and
      straw and twisted paper that the wind drove up and down its sad untended
      length; and toward the end of the day, when traffic had been active, the
      fissured pavement formed a mosaic of coloured hand-bills, lids of
      tomato-cans, old shoes, cigar-stumps and banana skins, cemented together
      by a layer of mud, or veiled in a powdering of dust, as the state of the
      weather determined.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sole refuge offered from the contemplation of this depressing waste
      was the sight of the Bunner Sisters' window. Its panes were always
      well-washed, and though their display of artificial flowers, bands of
      scalloped flannel, wire hat-frames, and jars of home-made preserves, had
      the undefinable greyish tinge of objects long preserved in the show-case
      of a museum, the window revealed a background of orderly counters and
      white-washed walls in pleasant contrast to the adjoining dinginess.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Bunner sisters were proud of the neatness of their shop and content
      with its humble prosperity. It was not what they had once imagined it
      would be, but though it presented but a shrunken image of their earlier
      ambitions it enabled them to pay their rent and keep themselves alive and
      out of debt; and it was long since their hopes had soared higher.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now and then, however, among their greyer hours there came one not bright
      enough to be called sunny, but rather of the silvery twilight hue which
      sometimes ends a day of storm. It was such an hour that Ann Eliza, the
      elder of the firm, was soberly enjoying as she sat one January evening in
      the back room which served as bedroom, kitchen and parlour to herself and
      her sister Evelina. In the shop the blinds had been drawn down, the
      counters cleared and the wares in the window lightly covered with an old
      sheet; but the shop-door remained unlocked till Evelina, who had taken a
      parcel to the dyer's, should come back.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the back room a kettle bubbled on the stove, and Ann Eliza had laid a
      cloth over one end of the centre table, and placed near the green-shaded
      sewing lamp two tea-cups, two plates, a sugar-bowl and a piece of pie. The
      rest of the room remained in a greenish shadow which discreetly veiled the
      outline of an old-fashioned mahogany bedstead surmounted by a chromo of a
      young lady in a night-gown who clung with eloquently-rolling eyes to a
      crag described in illuminated letters as the Rock of Ages; and against the
      unshaded windows two rocking-chairs and a sewing-machine were silhouetted
      on the dusk.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, her small and habitually anxious face smoothed to unusual
      serenity, and the streaks of pale hair on her veined temples shining
      glossily beneath the lamp, had seated herself at the table, and was tying
      up, with her usual fumbling deliberation, a knobby object wrapped in
      paper. Now and then, as she struggled with the string, which was too
      short, she fancied she heard the click of the shop-door, and paused to
      listen for her sister; then, as no one came, she straightened her
      spectacles and entered into renewed conflict with the parcel. In honour of
      some event of obvious importance, she had put on her double-dyed and
      triple-turned black silk. Age, while bestowing on this garment a patine
      worthy of a Renaissance bronze, had deprived it of whatever curves the
      wearer's pre-Raphaelite figure had once been able to impress on it; but
      this stiffness of outline gave it an air of sacerdotal state which seemed
      to emphasize the importance of the occasion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Seen thus, in her sacramental black silk, a wisp of lace turned over the
      collar and fastened by a mosaic brooch, and her face smoothed into harmony
      with her apparel, Ann Eliza looked ten years younger than behind the
      counter, in the heat and burden of the day. It would have been as
      difficult to guess her approximate age as that of the black silk, for she
      had the same worn and glossy aspect as her dress; but a faint tinge of
      pink still lingered on her cheek-bones, like the reflection of sunset
      which sometimes colours the west long after the day is over.
    </p>
    <p>
      When she had tied the parcel to her satisfaction, and laid it with furtive
      accuracy just opposite her sister's plate, she sat down, with an air of
      obviously-assumed indifference, in one of the rocking-chairs near the
      window; and a moment later the shop-door opened and Evelina entered.
    </p>
    <p>
      The younger Bunner sister, who was a little taller than her elder, had a
      more pronounced nose, but a weaker slope of mouth and chin. She still
      permitted herself the frivolity of waving her pale hair, and its tight
      little ridges, stiff as the tresses of an Assyrian statue, were flattened
      under a dotted veil which ended at the tip of her cold-reddened nose. In
      her scant jacket and skirt of black cashmere she looked singularly nipped
      and faded; but it seemed possible that under happier conditions she might
      still warm into relative youth.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, Ann Eliza,” she exclaimed, in a thin voice pitched to chronic
      fretfulness, “what in the world you got your best silk on for?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza had risen with a blush that made her steel-browed spectacles
      incongruous.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, Evelina, why shouldn't I, I sh'ld like to know? Ain't it your
      birthday, dear?” She put out her arms with the awkwardness of habitually
      repressed emotion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina, without seeming to notice the gesture, threw back the jacket from
      her narrow shoulders.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, pshaw,” she said, less peevishly. “I guess we'd better give up
      birthdays. Much as we can do to keep Christmas nowadays.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “You hadn't oughter say that, Evelina. We ain't so badly off as all that.
      I guess you're cold and tired. Set down while I take the kettle off: it's
      right on the boil.”
     </p>
    <p>
      She pushed Evelina toward the table, keeping a sideward eye on her
      sister's listless movements, while her own hands were busy with the
      kettle. A moment later came the exclamation for which she waited.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, Ann Eliza!” Evelina stood transfixed by the sight of the parcel
      beside her plate.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, tremulously engaged in filling the teapot, lifted a look of
      hypocritical surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Sakes, Evelina! What's the matter?”
     </p>
    <p>
      The younger sister had rapidly untied the string, and drawn from its
      wrappings a round nickel clock of the kind to be bought for a
      dollar-seventy-five.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, Ann Eliza, how could you?” She set the clock down, and the sisters
      exchanged agitated glances across the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well,” the elder retorted, “<i>Ain't</i> it your birthday?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, but&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, and ain't you had to run round the corner to the Square every
      morning, rain or shine, to see what time it was, ever since we had to sell
      mother's watch last July? Ain't you, Evelina?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, but&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      “There ain't any buts. We've always wanted a clock and now we've got one:
      that's all there is about it. Ain't she a beauty, Evelina?” Ann Eliza,
      putting back the kettle on the stove, leaned over her sister's shoulder to
      pass an approving hand over the circular rim of the clock. “Hear how loud
      she ticks. I was afraid you'd hear her soon as you come in.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “No. I wasn't thinking,” murmured Evelina.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, ain't you glad now?” Ann Eliza gently reproached her. The rebuke
      had no acerbity, for she knew that Evelina's seeming indifference was
      alive with unexpressed scruples.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I'm real glad, sister; but you hadn't oughter. We could have got on well
      enough without.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Evelina Bunner, just you sit down to your tea. I guess I know what I'd
      oughter and what I'd hadn't oughter just as well as you do&mdash;I'm old
      enough!”
     </p>
    <p>
      “You're real good, Ann Eliza; but I know you've given up something you
      needed to get me this clock.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “What do I need, I'd like to know? Ain't I got a best black silk?” the
      elder sister said with a laugh full of nervous pleasure.
    </p>
    <p>
      She poured out Evelina's tea, adding some condensed milk from the jug, and
      cutting for her the largest slice of pie; then she drew up her own chair
      to the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      The two women ate in silence for a few moments before Evelina began to
      speak again. “The clock is perfectly lovely and I don't say it ain't a
      comfort to have it; but I hate to think what it must have cost you.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “No, it didn't, neither,” Ann Eliza retorted. “I got it dirt cheap, if you
      want to know. And I paid for it out of a little extra work I did the other
      night on the machine for Mrs. Hawkins.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “The baby-waists?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “There, I knew it! You swore to me you'd buy a new pair of shoes with that
      money.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, and s'posin' I didn't want 'em&mdash;what then? I've patched up the
      old ones as good as new&mdash;and I do declare, Evelina Bunner, if you ask
      me another question you'll go and spoil all my pleasure.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Very well, I won't,” said the younger sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      They continued to eat without farther words. Evelina yielded to her
      sister's entreaty that she should finish the pie, and poured out a second
      cup of tea, into which she put the last lump of sugar; and between them,
      on the table, the clock kept up its sociable tick.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Where'd you get it, Ann Eliza?” asked Evelina, fascinated.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Where'd you s'pose? Why, right round here, over acrost the Square, in the
      queerest little store you ever laid eyes on. I saw it in the window as I
      was passing, and I stepped right in and asked how much it was, and the
      store-keeper he was real pleasant about it. He was just the nicest man. I
      guess he's a German. I told him I couldn't give much, and he said, well,
      he knew what hard times was too. His name's Ramy&mdash;Herman Ramy: I saw
      it written up over the store. And he told me he used to work at Tiff'ny's,
      oh, for years, in the clock-department, and three years ago he took sick
      with some kinder fever, and lost his place, and when he got well they'd
      engaged somebody else and didn't want him, and so he started this little
      store by himself. I guess he's real smart, and he spoke quite like an
      educated man&mdash;but he looks sick.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina was listening with absorbed attention. In the narrow lives of the
      two sisters such an episode was not to be under-rated.
    </p>
    <p>
      “What you say his name was?” she asked as Ann Eliza paused.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Herman Ramy.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “How old is he?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I couldn't exactly tell you, he looked so sick&mdash;but I don't
      b'lieve he's much over forty.”
     </p>
    <p>
      By this time the plates had been cleared and the teapot emptied, and the
      two sisters rose from the table. Ann Eliza, tying an apron over her black
      silk, carefully removed all traces of the meal; then, after washing the
      cups and plates, and putting them away in a cupboard, she drew her
      rocking-chair to the lamp and sat down to a heap of mending. Evelina,
      meanwhile, had been roaming about the room in search of an abiding-place
      for the clock. A rosewood what-not with ornamental fret-work hung on the
      wall beside the devout young lady in dishabille, and after much weighing
      of alternatives the sisters decided to dethrone a broken china vase filled
      with dried grasses which had long stood on the top shelf, and to put the
      clock in its place; the vase, after farther consideration, being relegated
      to a small table covered with blue and white beadwork, which held a Bible
      and prayer-book, and an illustrated copy of Longfellow's poems given as a
      school-prize to their father.
    </p>
    <p>
      This change having been made, and the effect studied from every angle of
      the room, Evelina languidly put her pinking-machine on the table, and sat
      down to the monotonous work of pinking a heap of black silk flounces. The
      strips of stuff slid slowly to the floor at her side, and the clock, from
      its commanding altitude, kept time with the dispiriting click of the
      instrument under her fingers.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      II
    </h2>
    <p>
      The purchase of Evelina's clock had been a more important event in the
      life of Ann Eliza Bunner than her younger sister could divine. In the
      first place, there had been the demoralizing satisfaction of finding
      herself in possession of a sum of money which she need not put into the
      common fund, but could spend as she chose, without consulting Evelina, and
      then the excitement of her stealthy trips abroad, undertaken on the rare
      occasions when she could trump up a pretext for leaving the shop; since,
      as a rule, it was Evelina who took the bundles to the dyer's, and
      delivered the purchases of those among their customers who were too
      genteel to be seen carrying home a bonnet or a bundle of pinking&mdash;so
      that, had it not been for the excuse of having to see Mrs. Hawkins's
      teething baby, Ann Eliza would hardly have known what motive to allege for
      deserting her usual seat behind the counter.
    </p>
    <p>
      The infrequency of her walks made them the chief events of her life. The
      mere act of going out from the monastic quiet of the shop into the tumult
      of the streets filled her with a subdued excitement which grew too intense
      for pleasure as she was swallowed by the engulfing roar of Broadway or
      Third Avenue, and began to do timid battle with their incessant
      cross-currents of humanity. After a glance or two into the great
      show-windows she usually allowed herself to be swept back into the shelter
      of a side-street, and finally regained her own roof in a state of
      breathless bewilderment and fatigue; but gradually, as her nerves were
      soothed by the familiar quiet of the little shop, and the click of
      Evelina's pinking-machine, certain sights and sounds would detach
      themselves from the torrent along which she had been swept, and she would
      devote the rest of the day to a mental reconstruction of the different
      episodes of her walk, till finally it took shape in her thought as a
      consecutive and highly-coloured experience, from which, for weeks
      afterwards, she would detach some fragmentary recollection in the course
      of her long dialogues with her sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      But when, to the unwonted excitement of going out, was added the intenser
      interest of looking for a present for Evelina, Ann Eliza's agitation,
      sharpened by concealment, actually preyed upon her rest; and it was not
      till the present had been given, and she had unbosomed herself of the
      experiences connected with its purchase, that she could look back with
      anything like composure to that stirring moment of her life. From that day
      forward, however, she began to take a certain tranquil pleasure in
      thinking of Mr. Ramy's small shop, not unlike her own in its countrified
      obscurity, though the layer of dust which covered its counter and shelves
      made the comparison only superficially acceptable. Still, she did not
      judge the state of the shop severely, for Mr. Ramy had told her that he
      was alone in the world, and lone men, she was aware, did not know how to
      deal with dust. It gave her a good deal of occupation to wonder why he had
      never married, or if, on the other hand, he were a widower, and had lost
      all his dear little children; and she scarcely knew which alternative
      seemed to make him the more interesting. In either case, his life was
      assuredly a sad one; and she passed many hours in speculating on the
      manner in which he probably spent his evenings. She knew he lived at the
      back of his shop, for she had caught, on entering, a glimpse of a dingy
      room with a tumbled bed; and the pervading smell of cold fry suggested
      that he probably did his own cooking. She wondered if he did not often
      make his tea with water that had not boiled, and asked herself, almost
      jealously, who looked after the shop while he went to market. Then it
      occurred to her as likely that he bought his provisions at the same market
      as Evelina; and she was fascinated by the thought that he and her sister
      might constantly be meeting in total unconsciousness of the link between
      them. Whenever she reached this stage in her reflexions she lifted a
      furtive glance to the clock, whose loud staccato tick was becoming a part
      of her inmost being.
    </p>
    <p>
      The seed sown by these long hours of meditation germinated at last in the
      secret wish to go to market some morning in Evelina's stead. As this
      purpose rose to the surface of Ann Eliza's thoughts she shrank back shyly
      from its contemplation. A plan so steeped in duplicity had never before
      taken shape in her crystalline soul. How was it possible for her to
      consider such a step? And, besides, (she did not possess sufficient logic
      to mark the downward trend of this “besides”), what excuse could she make
      that would not excite her sister's curiosity? From this second query it
      was an easy descent to the third: how soon could she manage to go?
    </p>
    <p>
      It was Evelina herself, who furnished the necessary pretext by awaking
      with a sore throat on the day when she usually went to market. It was a
      Saturday, and as they always had their bit of steak on Sunday the
      expedition could not be postponed, and it seemed natural that Ann Eliza,
      as she tied an old stocking around Evelina's throat, should announce her
      intention of stepping round to the butcher's.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, Ann Eliza, they'll cheat you so,” her sister wailed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza brushed aside the imputation with a smile, and a few minutes
      later, having set the room to rights, and cast a last glance at the shop,
      she was tying on her bonnet with fumbling haste.
    </p>
    <p>
      The morning was damp and cold, with a sky full of sulky clouds that would
      not make room for the sun, but as yet dropped only an occasional
      snow-flake. In the early light the street looked its meanest and most
      neglected; but to Ann Eliza, never greatly troubled by any untidiness for
      which she was not responsible, it seemed to wear a singularly friendly
      aspect.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few minutes' walk brought her to the market where Evelina made her
      purchases, and where, if he had any sense of topographical fitness, Mr.
      Ramy must also deal.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, making her way through the outskirts of potato-barrels and
      flabby fish, found no one in the shop but the gory-aproned butcher who
      stood in the background cutting chops.
    </p>
    <p>
      As she approached him across the tesselation of fish-scales, blood and
      saw-dust, he laid aside his cleaver and not unsympathetically asked:
      “Sister sick?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, not very&mdash;jest a cold,” she answered, as guiltily as if
      Evelina's illness had been feigned. “We want a steak as usual, please&mdash;and
      my sister said you was to be sure to give me jest as good a cut as if it
      was her,” she added with child-like candour.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, that's all right.” The butcher picked up his weapon with a grin.
      “Your sister knows a cut as well as any of us,” he remarked.
    </p>
    <p>
      In another moment, Ann Eliza reflected, the steak would be cut and wrapped
      up, and no choice left her but to turn her disappointed steps toward home.
      She was too shy to try to delay the butcher by such conversational arts as
      she possessed, but the approach of a deaf old lady in an antiquated bonnet
      and mantle gave her her opportunity.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Wait on her first, please,” Ann Eliza whispered. “I ain't in any hurry.”
     </p>
    <p>
      The butcher advanced to his new customer, and Ann Eliza, palpitating in
      the back of the shop, saw that the old lady's hesitations between liver
      and pork chops were likely to be indefinitely prolonged. They were still
      unresolved when she was interrupted by the entrance of a blowsy Irish girl
      with a basket on her arm. The newcomer caused a momentary diversion, and
      when she had departed the old lady, who was evidently as intolerant of
      interruption as a professional story-teller, insisted on returning to the
      beginning of her complicated order, and weighing anew, with an anxious
      appeal to the butcher's arbitration, the relative advantages of pork and
      liver. But even her hesitations, and the intrusion on them of two or three
      other customers, were of no avail, for Mr. Ramy was not among those who
      entered the shop; and at last Ann Eliza, ashamed of staying longer,
      reluctantly claimed her steak, and walked home through the thickening
      snow.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even to her simple judgment the vanity of her hopes was plain, and in the
      clear light that disappointment turns upon our actions she wondered how
      she could have been foolish enough to suppose that, even if Mr. Ramy <i>did</i>
      go to that particular market, he would hit on the same day and hour as
      herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      There followed a colourless week unmarked by farther incident. The old
      stocking cured Evelina's throat, and Mrs. Hawkins dropped in once or twice
      to talk of her baby's teeth; some new orders for pinking were received,
      and Evelina sold a bonnet to the lady with puffed sleeves. The lady with
      puffed sleeves&mdash;a resident of “the Square,” whose name they had never
      learned, because she always carried her own parcels home&mdash;was the
      most distinguished and interesting figure on their horizon. She was
      youngish, she was elegant (as the title they had given her implied), and
      she had a sweet sad smile about which they had woven many histories; but
      even the news of her return to town&mdash;it was her first apparition that
      year&mdash;failed to arouse Ann Eliza's interest. All the small daily
      happenings which had once sufficed to fill the hours now appeared to her
      in their deadly insignificance; and for the first time in her long years
      of drudgery she rebelled at the dullness of her life. With Evelina such
      fits of discontent were habitual and openly proclaimed, and Ann Eliza
      still excused them as one of the prerogatives of youth. Besides, Evelina
      had not been intended by Providence to pine in such a narrow life: in the
      original plan of things, she had been meant to marry and have a baby, to
      wear silk on Sundays, and take a leading part in a Church circle. Hitherto
      opportunity had played her false; and for all her superior aspirations and
      carefully crimped hair she had remained as obscure and unsought as Ann
      Eliza. But the elder sister, who had long since accepted her own fate, had
      never accepted Evelina's. Once a pleasant young man who taught in
      Sunday-school had paid the younger Miss Bunner a few shy visits. That was
      years since, and he had speedily vanished from their view. Whether he had
      carried with him any of Evelina's illusions, Ann Eliza had never
      discovered; but his attentions had clad her sister in a halo of exquisite
      possibilities.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, in those days, had never dreamed of allowing herself the luxury
      of self-pity: it seemed as much a personal right of Evelina's as her
      elaborately crinkled hair. But now she began to transfer to herself a
      portion of the sympathy she had so long bestowed on Evelina. She had at
      last recognized her right to set up some lost opportunities of her own;
      and once that dangerous precedent established, they began to crowd upon
      her memory.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was at this stage of Ann Eliza's transformation that Evelina, looking
      up one evening from her work, said suddenly: “My! She's stopped.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, raising her eyes from a brown merino seam, followed her
      sister's glance across the room. It was a Monday, and they always wound
      the clock on Sundays.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Are you sure you wound her yesterday, Evelina?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Jest as sure as I live. She must be broke. I'll go and see.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina laid down the hat she was trimming, and took the clock from its
      shelf.
    </p>
    <p>
      “There&mdash;I knew it! She's wound jest as <i>tight</i>&mdash;what you suppose's
      happened to her, Ann Eliza?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I dunno, I'm sure,” said the elder sister, wiping her spectacles before
      proceeding to a close examination of the clock.
    </p>
    <p>
      With anxiously bent heads the two women shook and turned it, as though
      they were trying to revive a living thing; but it remained unresponsive to
      their touch, and at length Evelina laid it down with a sigh.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Seems like somethin' <i>dead</i>, don't it, Ann Eliza? How still the room is!”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, ain't it?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I'll put her back where she belongs,” Evelina continued, in the
      tone of one about to perform the last offices for the departed. “And I
      guess,” she added, “you'll have to step round to Mr. Ramy's to-morrow, and
      see if he can fix her.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza's face burned. “I&mdash;yes, I guess I'll have to,” she
      stammered, stooping to pick up a spool of cotton which had rolled to the
      floor. A sudden heart-throb stretched the seams of her flat alpaca bosom,
      and a pulse leapt to life in each of her temples.
    </p>
    <p>
      That night, long after Evelina slept, Ann Eliza lay awake in the
      unfamiliar silence, more acutely conscious of the nearness of the crippled
      clock than when it had volubly told out the minutes. The next morning she
      woke from a troubled dream of having carried it to Mr. Ramy's, and found
      that he and his shop had vanished; and all through the day's occupations
      the memory of this dream oppressed her.
    </p>
    <p>
      It had been agreed that Ann Eliza should take the clock to be repaired as
      soon as they had dined; but while they were still at table a weak-eyed
      little girl in a black apron stabbed with innumerable pins burst in on
      them with the cry: “Oh, Miss Bunner, for mercy's sake! Miss Mellins has
      been took again.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Miss Mellins was the dress-maker upstairs, and the weak-eyed child one of
      her youthful apprentices.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza started from her seat. “I'll come at once. Quick, Evelina, the
      cordial!”
     </p>
    <p>
      By this euphemistic name the sisters designated a bottle of cherry brandy,
      the last of a dozen inherited from their grandmother, which they kept
      locked in their cupboard against such emergencies. A moment later, cordial
      in hand, Ann Eliza was hurrying upstairs behind the weak-eyed child.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Mellins' “turn” was sufficiently serious to detain Ann Eliza for
      nearly two hours, and dusk had fallen when she took up the depleted bottle
      of cordial and descended again to the shop. It was empty, as usual, and
      Evelina sat at her pinking-machine in the back room. Ann Eliza was still
      agitated by her efforts to restore the dress-maker, but in spite of her
      preoccupation she was struck, as soon as she entered, by the loud tick of
      the clock, which still stood on the shelf where she had left it.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, she's going!” she gasped, before Evelina could question her about
      Miss Mellins. “Did she start up again by herself?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, no; but I couldn't stand not knowing what time it was, I've got so
      accustomed to having her round; and just after you went upstairs Mrs.
      Hawkins dropped in, so I asked her to tend the store for a minute, and I
      clapped on my things and ran right round to Mr. Ramy's. It turned out
      there wasn't anything the matter with her&mdash;nothin' on'y a speck of
      dust in the works&mdash;and he fixed her for me in a minute and I brought
      her right back. Ain't it lovely to hear her going again? But tell me about
      Miss Mellins, quick!”
     </p>
    <p>
      For a moment Ann Eliza found no words. Not till she learned that she had
      missed her chance did she understand how many hopes had hung upon it. Even
      now she did not know why she had wanted so much to see the clock-maker
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I s'pose it's because nothing's ever happened to me,” she thought, with a
      twinge of envy for the fate which gave Evelina every opportunity that came
      their way. “She had the Sunday-school teacher too,” Ann Eliza murmured to
      herself; but she was well-trained in the arts of renunciation, and after a
      scarcely perceptible pause she plunged into a detailed description of the
      dress-maker's “turn.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina, when her curiosity was roused, was an insatiable questioner, and
      it was supper-time before she had come to the end of her enquiries about
      Miss Mellins; but when the two sisters had seated themselves at their
      evening meal Ann Eliza at last found a chance to say: “So she on'y had a
      speck of dust in her.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina understood at once that the reference was not to Miss Mellins.
      “Yes&mdash;at least he thinks so,” she answered, helping herself as a
      matter of course to the first cup of tea.
    </p>
    <p>
      “On'y to think!” murmured Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “But he isn't <i>sure</i>,” Evelina continued, absently pushing the teapot toward
      her sister. “It may be something wrong with the&mdash;I forget what he
      called it. Anyhow, he said he'd call round and see, day after to-morrow,
      after supper.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Who said?” gasped Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, Mr. Ramy, of course. I think he's real nice, Ann Eliza. And I don't
      believe he's forty; but he <i>does</i> look sick. I guess he's pretty lonesome,
      all by himself in that store. He as much as told me so, and somehow”&mdash;Evelina
      paused and bridled&mdash;“I kinder thought that maybe his saying he'd call
      round about the clock was on'y just an excuse. He said it just as I was
      going out of the store. What you think, Ann Eliza?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, I don't har'ly know.” To save herself, Ann Eliza could produce
      nothing warmer.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I don't pretend to be smarter than other folks,” said Evelina,
      putting a conscious hand to her hair, “but I guess Mr. Herman Ramy
      wouldn't be sorry to pass an evening here, 'stead of spending it all alone
      in that poky little place of his.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Her self-consciousness irritated Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I guess he's got plenty of friends of his own,” she said, almost harshly.
    </p>
    <p>
      “No, he ain't, either. He's got hardly any.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Did he tell you that too?” Even to her own ears there was a faint sneer
      in the interrogation.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, he did,” said Evelina, dropping her lids with a smile. “He seemed to
      be just crazy to talk to somebody&mdash;somebody agreeable, I mean. I
      think the man's unhappy, Ann Eliza.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “So do I,” broke from the elder sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      “He seems such an educated man, too. He was reading the paper when I went
      in. Ain't it sad to think of his being reduced to that little store, after
      being years at Tiff'ny's, and one of the head men in their
      clock-department?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “He told you all that?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Why, yes. I think he'd a' told me everything ever happened to him if I'd
      had the time to stay and listen. I tell you he's dead lonely, Ann Eliza.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes,” said Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      III
    </h2>
    <p>
      Two days afterward, Ann Eliza noticed that Evelina, before they sat down
      to supper, pinned a crimson bow under her collar; and when the meal was
      finished the younger sister, who seldom concerned herself with the
      clearing of the table, set about with nervous haste to help Ann Eliza in
      the removal of the dishes.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I hate to see food mussing about,” she grumbled. “Ain't it hateful having
      to do everything in one room?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, Evelina, I've always thought we was so comfortable,” Ann Eliza
      protested.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, so we are, comfortable enough; but I don't suppose there's any harm
      in my saying I wisht we had a parlour, is there? Anyway, we might manage
      to buy a screen to hide the bed.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza coloured. There was something vaguely embarrassing in Evelina's
      suggestion.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I always think if we ask for more what we have may be taken from us,” she
      ventured.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, whoever took it wouldn't get much,” Evelina retorted with a laugh
      as she swept up the table-cloth.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few moments later the back room was in its usual flawless order and the
      two sisters had seated themselves near the lamp. Ann Eliza had taken up
      her sewing, and Evelina was preparing to make artificial flowers. The
      sisters usually relegated this more delicate business to the long leisure
      of the summer months; but to-night Evelina had brought out the box which
      lay all winter under the bed, and spread before her a bright array of
      muslin petals, yellow stamens and green corollas, and a tray of little
      implements curiously suggestive of the dental art. Ann Eliza made no
      remark on this unusual proceeding; perhaps she guessed why, for that
      evening her sister had chosen a graceful task.
    </p>
    <p>
      Presently a knock on the outer door made them look up; but Evelina, the
      first on her feet, said promptly: “Sit still. I'll see who it is.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza was glad to sit still: the baby's petticoat that she was
      stitching shook in her fingers.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Sister, here's Mr. Ramy come to look at the clock,” said Evelina, a
      moment later, in the high drawl she cultivated before strangers; and a
      shortish man with a pale bearded face and upturned coat-collar came
      stiffly into the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza let her work fall as she stood up. “You're very welcome, I'm
      sure, Mr. Ramy. It's real kind of you to call.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Nod ad all, ma'am.” A tendency to illustrate Grimm's law in the
      interchange of his consonants betrayed the clockmaker's nationality, but
      he was evidently used to speaking English, or at least the particular
      branch of the vernacular with which the Bunner sisters were familiar. “I
      don't like to led any clock go out of my store without being sure it gives
      satisfaction,” he added.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh&mdash;but we were satisfied,” Ann Eliza assured him.
    </p>
    <p>
      “But I wasn't, you see, ma'am,” said Mr. Ramy looking slowly about the
      room, “nor I won't be, not till I see that clock's going all right.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “May I assist you off with your coat, Mr. Ramy?” Evelina interposed. She
      could never trust Ann Eliza to remember these opening ceremonies.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Thank you, ma'am,” he replied, and taking his thread-bare over-coat and
      shabby hat she laid them on a chair with the gesture she imagined the lady
      with the puffed sleeves might make use of on similar occasions. Ann
      Eliza's social sense was roused, and she felt that the next act of
      hospitality must be hers. “Won't you suit yourself to a seat?” she
      suggested. “My sister will reach down the clock; but I'm sure she's all
      right again. She's went beautiful ever since you fixed her.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Dat's good,” said Mr. Ramy. His lips parted in a smile which showed a row
      of yellowish teeth with one or two gaps in it; but in spite of this
      disclosure Ann Eliza thought his smile extremely pleasant: there was
      something wistful and conciliating in it which agreed with the pathos of
      his sunken cheeks and prominent eyes. As he took the lamp, the light fell
      on his bulging forehead and wide skull thinly covered with grayish hair.
      His hands were pale and broad, with knotty joints and square finger-tips
      rimmed with grime; but his touch was as light as a woman's.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, ladies, dat clock's all right,” he pronounced.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I'm sure we're very much obliged to you,” said Evelina, throwing a glance
      at her sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh,” Ann Eliza murmured, involuntarily answering the admonition. She
      selected a key from the bunch that hung at her waist with her cutting-out
      scissors, and fitting it into the lock of the cupboard, brought out the
      cherry brandy and three old-fashioned glasses engraved with vine-wreaths.
    </p>
    <p>
      “It's a very cold night,” she said, “and maybe you'd like a sip of this
      cordial. It was made a great while ago by our grandmother.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “It looks fine,” said Mr. Ramy bowing, and Ann Eliza filled the glasses.
      In her own and Evelina's she poured only a few drops, but she filled their
      guest's to the brim. “My sister and I seldom take wine,” she explained.
    </p>
    <p>
      With another bow, which included both his hostesses, Mr. Ramy drank off
      the cherry brandy and pronounced it excellent.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina meanwhile, with an assumption of industry intended to put their
      guest at ease, had taken up her instruments and was twisting a rose-petal
      into shape.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You make artificial flowers, I see, ma'am,” said Mr. Ramy with interest.
      “It's very pretty work. I had a lady-vriend in Shermany dat used to make
      flowers.” He put out a square finger-tip to touch the petal.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina blushed a little. “You left Germany long ago, I suppose?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Dear me yes, a goot while ago. I was only ninedeen when I come to the
      States.”
     </p>
    <p>
      After this the conversation dragged on intermittently till Mr. Ramy,
      peering about the room with the short-sighted glance of his race, said
      with an air of interest: “You're pleasantly fixed here; it looks real
      cosy.” The note of wistfulness in his voice was obscurely moving to Ann
      Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, we live very plainly,” said Evelina, with an affectation of grandeur
      deeply impressive to her sister. “We have very simple tastes.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “You look real comfortable, anyhow,” said Mr. Ramy. His bulging eyes
      seemed to muster the details of the scene with a gentle envy. “I wisht I
      had as good a store; but I guess no blace seems home-like when you're
      always alone in it.”
     </p>
    <p>
      For some minutes longer the conversation moved on at this desultory pace,
      and then Mr. Ramy, who had been obviously nerving himself for the
      difficult act of departure, took his leave with an abruptness which would
      have startled anyone used to the subtler gradations of intercourse. But to
      Ann Eliza and her sister there was nothing surprising in his abrupt
      retreat. The long-drawn agonies of preparing to leave, and the subsequent
      dumb plunge through the door, were so usual in their circle that they
      would have been as much embarrassed as Mr. Ramy if he had tried to put any
      fluency into his adieux.
    </p>
    <p>
      After he had left both sisters remained silent for a while; then Evelina,
      laying aside her unfinished flower, said: “I'll go and lock up.”
     </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      IV
    </h2>
    <p>
      Intolerably monotonous seemed now to the Bunner sisters the treadmill
      routine of the shop, colourless and long their evenings about the lamp,
      aimless their habitual interchange of words to the weary accompaniment of
      the sewing and pinking machines.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was perhaps with the idea of relieving the tension of their mood that
      Evelina, the following Sunday, suggested inviting Miss Mellins to supper.
      The Bunner sisters were not in a position to be lavish of the humblest
      hospitality, but two or three times in the year they shared their evening
      meal with a friend; and Miss Mellins, still flushed with the importance of
      her “turn,” seemed the most interesting guest they could invite.
    </p>
    <p>
      As the three women seated themselves at the supper-table, embellished by
      the unwonted addition of pound cake and sweet pickles, the dress-maker's
      sharp swarthy person stood out vividly between the neutral-tinted sisters.
      Miss Mellins was a small woman with a glossy yellow face and a frizz of
      black hair bristling with imitation tortoise-shell pins. Her sleeves had a
      fashionable cut, and half a dozen metal bangles rattled on her wrists. Her
      voice rattled like her bangles as she poured forth a stream of anecdote
      and ejaculation; and her round black eyes jumped with acrobatic velocity
      from one face to another. Miss Mellins was always having or hearing of
      amazing adventures. She had surprised a burglar in her room at midnight
      (though how he got there, what he robbed her of, and by what means he
      escaped had never been quite clear to her auditors); she had been warned
      by anonymous letters that her grocer (a rejected suitor) was putting
      poison in her tea; she had a customer who was shadowed by detectives, and
      another (a very wealthy lady) who had been arrested in a department store
      for kleptomania; she had been present at a spiritualist seance where an
      old gentleman had died in a fit on seeing a materialization of his
      mother-in-law; she had escaped from two fires in her night-gown, and at
      the funeral of her first cousin the horses attached to the hearse had run
      away and smashed the coffin, precipitating her relative into an open
      man-hole before the eyes of his distracted family.
    </p>
    <p>
      A sceptical observer might have explained Miss Mellins's proneness to
      adventure by the fact that she derived her chief mental nourishment from
      the Police Gazette and the Fireside Weekly; but her lot was cast in a
      circle where such insinuations were not likely to be heard, and where the
      title-role in blood-curdling drama had long been her recognized right.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Yes,” she was now saying, her emphatic eyes on Ann Eliza, “you may not
      believe it, Miss Bunner, and I don't know's I should myself if anybody
      else was to tell me, but over a year before ever I was born, my mother she
      went to see a gypsy fortune-teller that was exhibited in a tent on the
      Battery with the green-headed lady, though her father warned her not to&mdash;and
      what you s'pose she told her? Why, she told her these very words&mdash;says
      she: 'Your next child'll be a girl with jet-black curls, and she'll suffer
      from spasms.'”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Mercy!” murmured Ann Eliza, a ripple of sympathy running down her spine.
    </p>
    <p>
      “D'you ever have spasms before, Miss Mellins?” Evelina asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, ma'am,” the dress-maker declared. “And where'd you suppose I had
      'em? Why, at my cousin Emma McIntyre's wedding, her that married the
      apothecary over in Jersey City, though her mother appeared to her in a
      dream and told her she'd rue the day she done it, but as Emma said, she
      got more advice than she wanted from the living, and if she was to listen
      to spectres too she'd never be sure what she'd ought to do and what she'd
      oughtn't; but I will say her husband took to drink, and she never was the
      same woman after her fust baby&mdash;well, they had an elegant church
      wedding, and what you s'pose I saw as I was walkin' up the aisle with the
      wedding percession?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well?” Ann Eliza whispered, forgetting to thread her needle.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, a coffin, to be sure, right on the top step of the chancel&mdash;Emma's
      folks is 'piscopalians and she would have a church wedding, though <i>his</i>
      mother raised a terrible rumpus over it&mdash;well, there it set, right in
      front of where the minister stood that was going to marry 'em, a coffin
      covered with a black velvet pall with a gold fringe, and a 'Gates Ajar' in
      white camellias atop of it.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Goodness,” said Evelina, starting, “there's a knock!”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Who can it be?” shuddered Ann Eliza, still under the spell of Miss
      Mellins's hallucination.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina rose and lit a candle to guide her through the shop. They heard
      her turn the key of the outer door, and a gust of night air stirred the
      close atmosphere of the back room; then there was a sound of vivacious
      exclamations, and Evelina returned with Mr. Ramy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza's heart rocked like a boat in a heavy sea, and the dress-maker's
      eyes, distended with curiosity, sprang eagerly from face to face.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I just thought I'd call in again,” said Mr. Ramy, evidently somewhat
      disconcerted by the presence of Miss Mellins. “Just to see how the clock's
      behaving,” he added with his hollow-cheeked smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, she's behaving beautiful,” said Ann Eliza; “but we're real glad to
      see you all the same. Miss Mellins, let me make you acquainted with Mr.
      Ramy.”
     </p>
    <p>
      The dress-maker tossed back her head and dropped her lids in condescending
      recognition of the stranger's presence; and Mr. Ramy responded by an
      awkward bow. After the first moment of constraint a renewed sense of
      satisfaction filled the consciousness of the three women. The Bunner
      sisters were not sorry to let Miss Mellins see that they received an
      occasional evening visit, and Miss Mellins was clearly enchanted at the
      opportunity of pouring her latest tale into a new ear. As for Mr. Ramy, he
      adjusted himself to the situation with greater ease than might have been
      expected, and Evelina, who had been sorry that he should enter the room
      while the remains of supper still lingered on the table, blushed with
      pleasure at his good-humored offer to help her “glear away.”
     </p>
    <p>
      The table cleared, Ann Eliza suggested a game of cards; and it was after
      eleven o'clock when Mr. Ramy rose to take leave. His adieux were so much
      less abrupt than on the occasion of his first visit that Evelina was able
      to satisfy her sense of etiquette by escorting him, candle in hand, to the
      outer door; and as the two disappeared into the shop Miss Mellins
      playfully turned to Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, well, Miss Bunner,” she murmured, jerking her chin in the direction
      of the retreating figures, “I'd no idea your sister was keeping company.
      On'y to think!”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, roused from a state of dreamy beatitude, turned her timid eyes
      on the dress-maker.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, you're mistaken, Miss Mellins. We don't har'ly know Mr. Ramy.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Miss Mellins smiled incredulously. “You go 'long, Miss Bunner. I guess
      there'll be a wedding somewheres round here before spring, and I'll be
      real offended if I ain't asked to make the dress. I've always seen her in
      a gored satin with rooshings.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza made no answer. She had grown very pale, and her eyes lingered
      searchingly on Evelina as the younger sister re-entered the room.
      Evelina's cheeks were pink, and her blue eyes glittered; but it seemed to
      Ann Eliza that the coquettish tilt of her head regrettably emphasized the
      weakness of her receding chin. It was the first time that Ann Eliza had
      ever seen a flaw in her sister's beauty, and her involuntary criticism
      startled her like a secret disloyalty.
    </p>
    <p>
      That night, after the light had been put out, the elder sister knelt
      longer than usual at her prayers. In the silence of the darkened room she
      was offering up certain dreams and aspirations whose brief blossoming had
      lent a transient freshness to her days. She wondered now how she could
      ever have supposed that Mr. Ramy's visits had another cause than the one
      Miss Mellins suggested. Had not the sight of Evelina first inspired him
      with a sudden solicitude for the welfare of the clock? And what charms but
      Evelina's could have induced him to repeat his visit? Grief held up its
      torch to the frail fabric of Ann Eliza's illusions, and with a firm heart
      she watched them shrivel into ashes; then, rising from her knees full of
      the chill joy of renunciation, she laid a kiss on the crimping pins of the
      sleeping Evelina and crept under the bedspread at her side.
    </p>
    <p>
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    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      V
    </h2>
    <p>
      During the months that followed, Mr. Ramy visited the sisters with
      increasing frequency. It became his habit to call on them every Sunday
      evening, and occasionally during the week he would find an excuse for
      dropping in unannounced as they were settling down to their work beside
      the lamp. Ann Eliza noticed that Evelina now took the precaution of
      putting on her crimson bow every evening before supper, and that she had
      refurbished with a bit of carefully washed lace the black silk which they
      still called new because it had been bought a year after Ann Eliza's.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Ramy, as he grew more intimate, became less conversational, and after
      the sisters had blushingly accorded him the privilege of a pipe he began
      to permit himself long stretches of meditative silence that were not
      without charm to his hostesses. There was something at once fortifying and
      pacific in the sense of that tranquil male presence in an atmosphere which
      had so long quivered with little feminine doubts and distresses; and the
      sisters fell into the habit of saying to each other, in moments of
      uncertainty: “We'll ask Mr. Ramy when he comes,” and of accepting his
      verdict, whatever it might be, with a fatalistic readiness that relieved
      them of all responsibility.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Mr. Ramy drew the pipe from his mouth and became, in his turn,
      confidential, the acuteness of their sympathy grew almost painful to the
      sisters. With passionate participation they listened to the story of his
      early struggles in Germany, and of the long illness which had been the
      cause of his recent misfortunes. The name of the Mrs. Hochmuller (an old
      comrade's widow) who had nursed him through his fever was greeted with
      reverential sighs and an inward pang of envy whenever it recurred in his
      biographical monologues, and once when the sisters were alone Evelina
      called a responsive flush to Ann Eliza's brow by saying suddenly, without
      the mention of any name: “I wonder what she's like?”
     </p>
    <p>
      One day toward spring Mr. Ramy, who had by this time become as much a part
      of their lives as the letter-carrier or the milkman, ventured the
      suggestion that the ladies should accompany him to an exhibition of
      stereopticon views which was to take place at Chickering Hall on the
      following evening.
    </p>
    <p>
      After their first breathless “Oh!” of pleasure there was a silence of
      mutual consultation, which Ann Eliza at last broke by saying: “You better
      go with Mr. Ramy, Evelina. I guess we don't both want to leave the store
      at night.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina, with such protests as politeness demanded, acquiesced in this
      opinion, and spent the next day in trimming a white chip bonnet with
      forget-me-nots of her own making. Ann Eliza brought out her mosaic brooch,
      a cashmere scarf of their mother's was taken from its linen cerements, and
      thus adorned Evelina blushingly departed with Mr. Ramy, while the elder
      sister sat down in her place at the pinking-machine.
    </p>
    <p>
      It seemed to Ann Eliza that she was alone for hours, and she was
      surprised, when she heard Evelina tap on the door, to find that the clock
      marked only half-past ten.
    </p>
    <p>
      “It must have gone wrong again,” she reflected as she rose to let her
      sister in.
    </p>
    <p>
      The evening had been brilliantly interesting, and several striking
      stereopticon views of Berlin had afforded Mr. Ramy the opportunity of
      enlarging on the marvels of his native city.
    </p>
    <p>
      “He said he'd love to show it all to me!” Evelina declared as Ann Eliza
      conned her glowing face. “Did you ever hear anything so silly? I didn't
      know which way to look.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza received this confidence with a sympathetic murmur.
    </p>
    <p>
      “My bonnet <i>is</i> becoming, isn't it?” Evelina went on irrelevantly, smiling
      at her reflection in the cracked glass above the chest of drawers.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You're jest lovely,” said Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      Spring was making itself unmistakably known to the distrustful New Yorker
      by an increased harshness of wind and prevalence of dust, when one day
      Evelina entered the back room at supper-time with a cluster of jonquils in
      her hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I was just that foolish,” she answered Ann Eliza's wondering glance, “I
      couldn't help buyin' 'em. I felt as if I must have something pretty to
      look at right away.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, sister,” said Ann Eliza, in trembling sympathy. She felt that special
      indulgence must be conceded to those in Evelina's state since she had had
      her own fleeting vision of such mysterious longings as the words betrayed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina, meanwhile, had taken the bundle of dried grasses out of the
      broken china vase, and was putting the jonquils in their place with
      touches that lingered down their smooth stems and blade-like leaves.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Ain't they pretty?” she kept repeating as she gathered the flowers into a
      starry circle. “Seems as if spring was really here, don't it?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza remembered that it was Mr. Ramy's evening.
    </p>
    <p>
      When he came, the Teutonic eye for anything that blooms made him turn at
      once to the jonquils.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Ain't dey pretty?” he said. “Seems like as if de spring was really here.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Don't it?” Evelina exclaimed, thrilled by the coincidence of their
      thought. “It's just what I was saying to my sister.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza got up suddenly and moved away; she remembered that she had not
      wound the clock the day before. Evelina was sitting at the table; the
      jonquils rose slenderly between herself and Mr. Ramy.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh,” she murmured with vague eyes, “how I'd love to get away somewheres
      into the country this very minute&mdash;somewheres where it was green and
      quiet. Seems as if I couldn't stand the city another day.” But Ann Eliza
      noticed that she was looking at Mr. Ramy, and not at the flowers.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I guess we might go to Cendral Park some Sunday,” their visitor
      suggested. “Do you ever go there, Miss Evelina?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “No, we don't very often; leastways we ain't been for a good while.” She
      sparkled at the prospect. “It would be lovely, wouldn't it, Ann Eliza?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Why, yes,” said the elder sister, coming back to her seat.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, why don't we go next Sunday?” Mr. Ramy continued. “And we'll invite
      Miss Mellins too&mdash;that'll make a gosy little party.”
     </p>
    <p>
      That night when Evelina undressed she took a jonquil from the vase and
      pressed it with a certain ostentation between the leaves of her
      prayer-book. Ann Eliza, covertly observing her, felt that Evelina was not
      sorry to be observed, and that her own acute consciousness of the act was
      somehow regarded as magnifying its significance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The following Sunday broke blue and warm. The Bunner sisters were habitual
      church-goers, but for once they left their prayer-books on the what-not,
      and ten o'clock found them, gloved and bonneted, awaiting Miss Mellins's
      knock. Miss Mellins presently appeared in a glitter of jet sequins and
      spangles, with a tale of having seen a strange man prowling under her
      windows till he was called off at dawn by a confederate's whistle; and
      shortly afterward came Mr. Ramy, his hair brushed with more than usual
      care, his broad hands encased in gloves of olive-green kid.
    </p>
    <p>
      The little party set out for the nearest street-car, and a flutter of
      mingled gratification and embarrassment stirred Ann Eliza's bosom when it
      was found that Mr. Ramy intended to pay their fares. Nor did he fail to
      live up to this opening liberality; for after guiding them through the
      Mall and the Ramble he led the way to a rustic restaurant where, also at
      his expense, they fared idyllically on milk and lemon-pie.
    </p>
    <p>
      After this they resumed their walk, strolling on with the slowness of
      unaccustomed holiday-makers from one path to another&mdash;through budding
      shrubberies, past grass-banks sprinkled with lilac crocuses, and under
      rocks on which the forsythia lay like sudden sunshine. Everything about
      her seemed new and miraculously lovely to Ann Eliza; but she kept her
      feelings to herself, leaving it to Evelina to exclaim at the hepaticas
      under the shady ledges, and to Miss Mellins, less interested in the
      vegetable than in the human world, to remark significantly on the probable
      history of the persons they met. All the alleys were thronged with
      promenaders and obstructed by perambulators; and Miss Mellins's running
      commentary threw a glare of lurid possibilities over the placid family
      groups and their romping progeny.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza was in no mood for such interpretations of life; but, knowing
      that Miss Mellins had been invited for the sole purpose of keeping her
      company she continued to cling to the dress-maker's side, letting Mr. Ramy
      lead the way with Evelina. Miss Mellins, stimulated by the excitement of
      the occasion, grew more and more discursive, and her ceaseless talk, and
      the kaleidoscopic whirl of the crowd, were unspeakably bewildering to Ann
      Eliza. Her feet, accustomed to the slippered ease of the shop, ached with
      the unfamiliar effort of walking, and her ears with the din of the
      dress-maker's anecdotes; but every nerve in her was aware of Evelina's
      enjoyment, and she was determined that no weariness of hers should curtail
      it. Yet even her heroism shrank from the significant glances which Miss
      Mellins presently began to cast at the couple in front of them: Ann Eliza
      could bear to connive at Evelina's bliss, but not to acknowledge it to
      others.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length Evelina's feet also failed her, and she turned to suggest that
      they ought to be going home. Her flushed face had grown pale with fatigue,
      but her eyes were radiant.
    </p>
    <p>
      The return lived in Ann Eliza's memory with the persistence of an evil
      dream. The horse-cars were packed with the returning throng, and they had
      to let a dozen go by before they could push their way into one that was
      already crowded. Ann Eliza had never before felt so tired. Even Miss
      Mellins's flow of narrative ran dry, and they sat silent, wedged between a
      negro woman and a pock-marked man with a bandaged head, while the car
      rumbled slowly down a squalid avenue to their corner. Evelina and Mr. Ramy
      sat together in the forward part of the car, and Ann Eliza could catch
      only an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the
      clock-maker's shiny coat-collar; but when the little party got out at
      their corner the crowd swept them together again, and they walked back in
      the effortless silence of tired children to the Bunner sisters' basement.
      As Miss Mellins and Mr. Ramy turned to go their various ways Evelina
      mustered a last display of smiles; but Ann Eliza crossed the threshold in
      silence, feeling the stillness of the little shop reach out to her like
      consoling arms.
    </p>
    <p>
      That night she could not sleep; but as she lay cold and rigid at her
      sister's side, she suddenly felt the pressure of Evelina's arms, and heard
      her whisper: “Oh, Ann Eliza, warn't it heavenly?”
     </p>
    <p>
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      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      VI
    </h2>
    <p>
      For four days after their Sunday in the Park the Bunner sisters had no
      news of Mr. Ramy. At first neither one betrayed her disappointment and
      anxiety to the other; but on the fifth morning Evelina, always the first
      to yield to her feelings, said, as she turned from her untasted tea: “I
      thought you'd oughter take that money out by now, Ann Eliza.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza understood and reddened. The winter had been a fairly prosperous
      one for the sisters, and their slowly accumulated savings had now reached
      the handsome sum of two hundred dollars; but the satisfaction they might
      have felt in this unwonted opulence had been clouded by a suggestion of
      Miss Mellins's that there were dark rumours concerning the savings bank in
      which their funds were deposited. They knew Miss Mellins was given to vain
      alarms; but her words, by the sheer force of repetition, had so shaken Ann
      Eliza's peace that after long hours of midnight counsel the sisters had
      decided to advise with Mr. Ramy; and on Ann Eliza, as the head of the
      house, this duty had devolved. Mr. Ramy, when consulted, had not only
      confirmed the dress-maker's report, but had offered to find some safe
      investment which should give the sisters a higher rate of interest than
      the suspected savings bank; and Ann Eliza knew that Evelina alluded to the
      suggested transfer.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, yes, to be sure,” she agreed. “Mr. Ramy said if he was us he
      wouldn't want to leave his money there any longer'n he could help.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “It was over a week ago he said it,” Evelina reminded her.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I know; but he told me to wait till he'd found out for sure about that
      other investment; and we ain't seen him since then.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza's words released their secret fear. “I wonder what's happened to
      him,” Evelina said. “You don't suppose he could be sick?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I was wondering too,” Ann Eliza rejoined; and the sisters looked down at
      their plates.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I should think you'd oughter do something about that money pretty soon,”
       Evelina began again.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I know I'd oughter. What would you do if you was me?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “If I was <i>you</i>,” said her sister, with perceptible emphasis and a rising
      blush, “I'd go right round and see if Mr. Ramy was sick. <i>You</i> could.”
     </p>
    <p>
      The words pierced Ann Eliza like a blade. “Yes, that's so,” she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      “It would only seem friendly, if he really <i>is</i> sick. If I was you I'd go
      to-day,” Evelina continued; and after dinner Ann Eliza went.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the way she had to leave a parcel at the dyer's, and having performed
      that errand she turned toward Mr. Ramy's shop. Never before had she felt
      so old, so hopeless and humble. She knew she was bound on a love-errand of
      Evelina's, and the knowledge seemed to dry the last drop of young blood in
      her veins. It took from her, too, all her faded virginal shyness; and with
      a brisk composure she turned the handle of the clock-maker's door.
    </p>
    <p>
      But as she entered her heart began to tremble, for she saw Mr. Ramy, his
      face hidden in his hands, sitting behind the counter in an attitude of
      strange dejection. At the click of the latch he looked up slowly, fixing a
      lustreless stare on Ann Eliza. For a moment she thought he did not know
      her.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, you're sick!” she exclaimed; and the sound of her voice seemed to
      recall his wandering senses.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, if it ain't Miss Bunner!” he said, in a low thick tone; but he made
      no attempt to move, and she noticed that his face was the colour of yellow
      ashes.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You <i>are</i> sick,” she persisted, emboldened by his evident need of help.
      “Mr. Ramy, it was real unfriendly of you not to let us know.”
     </p>
    <p>
      He continued to look at her with dull eyes. “I ain't been sick,” he said.
      “Leastways not very: only one of my old turns.” He spoke in a slow
      laboured way, as if he had difficulty in getting his words together.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Rheumatism?” she ventured, seeing how unwillingly he seemed to move.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well&mdash;somethin' like, maybe. I couldn't hardly put a name to it.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “If it <i>was</i> anything like rheumatism, my grandmother used to make a tea&mdash;”
       Ann Eliza began: she had forgotten, in the warmth of the moment, that she
      had only come as Evelina's messenger.
    </p>
    <p>
      At the mention of tea an expression of uncontrollable repugnance passed
      over Mr. Ramy's face. “Oh, I guess I'm getting on all right. I've just got
      a headache to-day.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza's courage dropped at the note of refusal in his voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I'm sorry,” she said gently. “My sister and me'd have been glad to do
      anything we could for you.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Thank you kindly,” said Mr. Ramy wearily; then, as she turned to the
      door, he added with an effort: “Maybe I'll step round to-morrow.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “We'll be real glad,” Ann Eliza repeated. Her eyes were fixed on a dusty
      bronze clock in the window. She was unaware of looking at it at the time,
      but long afterward she remembered that it represented a Newfoundland dog
      with his paw on an open book.
    </p>
    <p>
      When she reached home there was a purchaser in the shop, turning over
      hooks and eyes under Evelina's absent-minded supervision. Ann Eliza passed
      hastily into the back room, but in an instant she heard her sister at her
      side.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Quick! I told her I was goin' to look for some smaller hooks&mdash;how is
      he?” Evelina gasped.
    </p>
    <p>
      “He ain't been very well,” said Ann Eliza slowly, her eyes on Evelina's
      eager face; “but he says he'll be sure to be round to-morrow night.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “He will? Are you telling me the truth?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Why, Evelina Bunner!”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, I don't care!” cried the younger recklessly, rushing back into the
      shop.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza stood burning with the shame of Evelina's self-exposure. She was
      shocked that, even to her, Evelina should lay bare the nakedness of her
      emotion; and she tried to turn her thoughts from it as though its
      recollection made her a sharer in her sister's debasement.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next evening, Mr. Ramy reappeared, still somewhat sallow and
      red-lidded, but otherwise his usual self. Ann Eliza consulted him about
      the investment he had recommended, and after it had been settled that he
      should attend to the matter for her he took up the illustrated volume of
      Longfellow&mdash;for, as the sisters had learned, his culture soared
      beyond the newspapers&mdash;and read aloud, with a fine confusion of
      consonants, the poem on “Maidenhood.” Evelina lowered her lids while he
      read. It was a very beautiful evening, and Ann Eliza thought afterward how
      different life might have been with a companion who read poetry like Mr.
      Ramy.
    </p>
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      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      VII
    </h2>
    <p>
      During the ensuing weeks Mr. Ramy, though his visits were as frequent as
      ever, did not seem to regain his usual spirits. He complained frequently
      of headache, but rejected Ann Eliza's tentatively proffered remedies, and
      seemed to shrink from any prolonged investigation of his symptoms. July
      had come, with a sudden ardour of heat, and one evening, as the three sat
      together by the open window in the back room, Evelina said: “I dunno what
      I wouldn't give, a night like this, for a breath of real country air.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “So would I,” said Mr. Ramy, knocking the ashes from his pipe. “I'd like
      to be setting in an arbour dis very minute.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, wouldn't it be lovely?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I always think it's real cool here&mdash;we'd be heaps hotter up where
      Miss Mellins is,” said Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, I daresay&mdash;but we'd be heaps cooler somewhere else,” her sister
      snapped: she was not infrequently exasperated by Ann Eliza's furtive
      attempts to mollify Providence.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few days later Mr. Ramy appeared with a suggestion which enchanted
      Evelina. He had gone the day before to see his friend, Mrs. Hochmuller,
      who lived in the outskirts of Hoboken, and Mrs. Hochmuller had proposed
      that on the following Sunday he should bring the Bunner sisters to spend
      the day with her.
    </p>
    <p>
      “She's got a real garden, you know,” Mr. Ramy explained, “wid trees and a
      real summer-house to set in; and hens and chickens too. And it's an
      elegant sail over on de ferry-boat.”
     </p>
    <p>
      The proposal drew no response from Ann Eliza. She was still oppressed by
      the recollection of her interminable Sunday in the Park; but, obedient to
      Evelina's imperious glance, she finally faltered out an acceptance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Sunday was a very hot one, and once on the ferry-boat Ann Eliza
      revived at the touch of the salt breeze, and the spectacle of the crowded
      waters; but when they reached the other shore, and stepped out on the
      dirty wharf, she began to ache with anticipated weariness. They got into a
      street-car, and were jolted from one mean street to another, till at
      length Mr. Ramy pulled the conductor's sleeve and they got out again; then
      they stood in the blazing sun, near the door of a crowded beer-saloon,
      waiting for another car to come; and that carried them out to a thinly
      settled district, past vacant lots and narrow brick houses standing in
      unsupported solitude, till they finally reached an almost rural region of
      scattered cottages and low wooden buildings that looked like village
      “stores.” Here the car finally stopped of its own accord, and they walked
      along a rutty road, past a stone-cutter's yard with a high fence
      tapestried with theatrical advertisements, to a little red house with
      green blinds and a garden paling. Really, Mr. Ramy had not deceived them.
      Clumps of dielytra and day-lilies bloomed behind the paling, and a crooked
      elm hung romantically over the gable of the house.
    </p>
    <p>
      At the gate Mrs. Hochmuller, a broad woman in brick-brown merino, met them
      with nods and smiles, while her daughter Linda, a flaxen-haired girl with
      mottled red cheeks and a sidelong stare, hovered inquisitively behind her.
      Mrs. Hochmuller, leading the way into the house, conducted the Bunner
      sisters the way to her bedroom. Here they were invited to spread out on a
      mountainous white featherbed the cashmere mantles under which the
      solemnity of the occasion had compelled them to swelter, and when they had
      given their black silks the necessary twitch of readjustment, and Evelina
      had fluffed out her hair before a looking-glass framed in pink-shell work,
      their hostess led them to a stuffy parlour smelling of gingerbread. After
      another ceremonial pause, broken by polite enquiries and shy ejaculations,
      they were shown into the kitchen, where the table was already spread with
      strange-looking spice-cakes and stewed fruits, and where they presently
      found themselves seated between Mrs. Hochmuller and Mr. Ramy, while the
      staring Linda bumped back and forth from the stove with steaming dishes.
    </p>
    <p>
      To Ann Eliza the dinner seemed endless, and the rich fare strangely
      unappetizing. She was abashed by the easy intimacy of her hostess's voice
      and eye. With Mr. Ramy Mrs. Hochmuller was almost flippantly familiar, and
      it was only when Ann Eliza pictured her generous form bent above his
      sick-bed that she could forgive her for tersely addressing him as “Ramy.”
       During one of the pauses of the meal Mrs. Hochmuller laid her knife and
      fork against the edges of her plate, and, fixing her eyes on the
      clock-maker's face, said accusingly: “You hat one of dem turns again,
      Ramy.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I dunno as I had,” he returned evasively.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina glanced from one to the other. “Mr. Ramy <i>has</i> been sick,” she said
      at length, as though to show that she also was in a position to speak with
      authority. “He's complained very frequently of headaches.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Ho!&mdash;I know him,” said Mrs. Hochmuller with a laugh, her eyes still
      on the clock-maker. “Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Ramy?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Ramy, who was looking at his plate, said suddenly one word which the
      sisters could not understand; it sounded to Ann Eliza like “Shwike.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Hochmuller laughed again. “My, my,” she said, “wouldn't you think
      he'd be ashamed to go and be sick and never dell me, me that nursed him
      troo dat awful fever?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, I <i>should</i>,” said Evelina, with a spirited glance at Ramy; but he was
      looking at the sausages that Linda had just put on the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      When dinner was over Mrs. Hochmuller invited her guests to step out of the
      kitchen-door, and they found themselves in a green enclosure, half garden,
      half orchard. Grey hens followed by golden broods clucked under the
      twisted apple-boughs, a cat dozed on the edge of an old well, and from
      tree to tree ran the network of clothes-line that denoted Mrs.
      Hochmuller's calling. Beyond the apple trees stood a yellow summer-house
      festooned with scarlet runners; and below it, on the farther side of a
      rough fence, the land dipped down, holding a bit of woodland in its
      hollow. It was all strangely sweet and still on that hot Sunday afternoon,
      and as she moved across the grass under the apple-boughs Ann Eliza thought
      of quiet afternoons in church, and of the hymns her mother had sung to her
      when she was a baby.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina was more restless. She wandered from the well to the summer-house
      and back, she tossed crumbs to the chickens and disturbed the cat with
      arch caresses; and at last she expressed a desire to go down into the
      wood.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I guess you got to go round by the road, then,” said Mrs. Hochmuller. “My
      Linda she goes troo a hole in de fence, but I guess you'd tear your dress
      if you was to dry.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I'll help you,” said Mr. Ramy; and guided by Linda the pair walked along
      the fence till they reached a narrow gap in its boards. Through this they
      disappeared, watched curiously in their descent by the grinning Linda,
      while Mrs. Hochmuller and Ann Eliza were left alone in the summer-house.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Hochmuller looked at her guest with a confidential smile. “I guess
      dey'll be gone quite a while,” she remarked, jerking her double chin
      toward the gap in the fence. “Folks like dat don't never remember about de
      dime.” And she drew out her knitting.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Your sister she thinks a great lot of him, don't she?” her hostess
      continued.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza's cheeks grew hot. “Ain't you a teeny bit lonesome away out here
      sometimes?” she asked. “I should think you'd be scared nights, all alone
      with your daughter.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, no, I ain't,” said Mrs. Hochmuller. “You see I take in washing&mdash;dat's
      my business&mdash;and it's a lot cheaper doing it out here dan in de city:
      where'd I get a drying-ground like dis in Hobucken? And den it's safer for
      Linda too; it geeps her outer de streets.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh,” said Ann Eliza, shrinking. She began to feel a distinct aversion for
      her hostess, and her eyes turned with involuntary annoyance to the
      square-backed form of Linda, still inquisitively suspended on the fence.
      It seemed to Ann Eliza that Evelina and her companion would never return
      from the wood; but they came at length, Mr. Ramy's brow pearled with
      perspiration, Evelina pink and conscious, a drooping bunch of ferns in her
      hand; and it was clear that, to her at least, the moments had been winged.
    </p>
    <p>
      “D'you suppose they'll revive?” she asked, holding up the ferns; but Ann
      Eliza, rising at her approach, said stiffly: “We'd better be getting home,
      Evelina.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Mercy me! Ain't you going to take your coffee first?” Mrs. Hochmuller
      protested; and Ann Eliza found to her dismay that another long gastronomic
      ceremony must intervene before politeness permitted them to leave. At
      length, however, they found themselves again on the ferry-boat. Water and
      sky were grey, with a dividing gleam of sunset that sent sleek opal waves
      in the boat's wake. The wind had a cool tarry breath, as though it had
      travelled over miles of shipping, and the hiss of the water about the
      paddles was as delicious as though it had been splashed into their tired
      faces.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza sat apart, looking away from the others. She had made up her
      mind that Mr. Ramy had proposed to Evelina in the wood, and she was
      silently preparing herself to receive her sister's confidence that
      evening.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Evelina was apparently in no mood for confidences. When they reached
      home she put her faded ferns in water, and after supper, when she had laid
      aside her silk dress and the forget-me-not bonnet, she remained silently
      seated in her rocking-chair near the open window. It was long since Ann
      Eliza had seen her in so uncommunicative a mood.
    </p>
    <p>
      The following Saturday Ann Eliza was sitting alone in the shop when the
      door opened and Mr. Ramy entered. He had never before called at that hour,
      and she wondered a little anxiously what had brought him.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Has anything happened?” she asked, pushing aside the basketful of buttons
      she had been sorting.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Not's I know of,” said Mr. Ramy tranquilly. “But I always close up the
      store at two o'clock Saturdays at this season, so I thought I might as
      well call round and see you.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I'm real glad, I'm sure,” said Ann Eliza; “but Evelina's out.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I know dat,” Mr. Ramy answered. “I met her round de corner. She told me
      she got to go to dat new dyer's up in Forty-eighth Street. She won't be
      back for a couple of hours, har'ly, will she?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza looked at him with rising bewilderment. “No, I guess not,” she
      answered; her instinctive hospitality prompting her to add: “Won't you set
      down jest the same?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Ramy sat down on the stool beside the counter, and Ann Eliza returned
      to her place behind it.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I can't leave the store,” she explained.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I guess we're very well here.” Ann Eliza had become suddenly aware
      that Mr. Ramy was looking at her with unusual intentness. Involuntarily
      her hand strayed to the thin streaks of hair on her temples, and thence
      descended to straighten the brooch beneath her collar.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You're looking very well to-day, Miss Bunner,” said Mr. Ramy, following
      her gesture with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh,” said Ann Eliza nervously. “I'm always well in health,” she added.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I guess you're healthier than your sister, even if you are less
      sizeable.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, I don't know. Evelina's a mite nervous sometimes, but she ain't a bit
      sickly.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “She eats heartier than you do; but that don't mean nothing,” said Mr.
      Ramy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza was silent. She could not follow the trend of his thought, and
      she did not care to commit herself farther about Evelina before she had
      ascertained if Mr. Ramy considered nervousness interesting or the reverse.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Mr. Ramy spared her all farther indecision.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, Miss Bunner,” he said, drawing his stool closer to the counter, “I
      guess I might as well tell you fust as last what I come here for to-day. I
      want to get married.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, in many a prayerful midnight hour, had sought to strengthen
      herself for the hearing of this avowal, but now that it had come she felt
      pitifully frightened and unprepared. Mr. Ramy was leaning with both elbows
      on the counter, and she noticed that his nails were clean and that he had
      brushed his hat; yet even these signs had not prepared her!
    </p>
    <p>
      At last she heard herself say, with a dry throat in which her heart was
      hammering: “Mercy me, Mr. Ramy!”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I want to get married,” he repeated. “I'm too lonesome. It ain't good for
      a man to live all alone, and eat noding but cold meat every day.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “No,” said Ann Eliza softly.
    </p>
    <p>
      “And the dust fairly beats me.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, the dust&mdash;I know!”
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Ramy stretched one of his blunt-fingered hands toward her. “I wisht
      you'd take me.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Still Ann Eliza did not understand. She rose hesitatingly from her seat,
      pushing aside the basket of buttons which lay between them; then she
      perceived that Mr. Ramy was trying to take her hand, and as their fingers
      met a flood of joy swept over her. Never afterward, though every other
      word of their interview was stamped on her memory beyond all possible
      forgetting, could she recall what he said while their hands touched; she
      only knew that she seemed to be floating on a summer sea, and that all its
      waves were in her ears.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Me&mdash;me?” she gasped.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I guess so,” said her suitor placidly. “You suit me right down to the
      ground, Miss Bunner. Dat's the truth.”
     </p>
    <p>
      A woman passing along the street paused to look at the shop-window, and
      Ann Eliza half hoped she would come in; but after a desultory inspection
      she went on.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Maybe you don't fancy me?” Mr. Ramy suggested, discountenanced by Ann
      Eliza's silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      A word of assent was on her tongue, but her lips refused it. She must find
      some other way of telling him.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I don't say that.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I always kinder thought we was suited to one another,” Mr. Ramy
      continued, eased of his momentary doubt. “I always liked de quiet style&mdash;no
      fuss and airs, and not afraid of work.” He spoke as though dispassionately
      cataloguing her charms.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza felt that she must make an end. “But, Mr. Ramy, you don't
      understand. I've never thought of marrying.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Ramy looked at her in surprise. “Why not?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I don't know, har'ly.” She moistened her twitching lips. “The fact
      is, I ain't as active as I look. Maybe I couldn't stand the care. I ain't
      as spry as Evelina&mdash;nor as young,” she added, with a last great
      effort.
    </p>
    <p>
      “But you do most of de work here, anyways,” said her suitor doubtfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, well, that's because Evelina's busy outside; and where there's only
      two women the work don't amount to much. Besides, I'm the oldest; I have
      to look after things,” she hastened on, half pained that her simple ruse
      should so readily deceive him.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I guess you're active enough for me,” he persisted. His calm
      determination began to frighten her; she trembled lest her own should be
      less staunch.
    </p>
    <p>
      “No, no,” she repeated, feeling the tears on her lashes. “I couldn't, Mr.
      Ramy, I couldn't marry. I'm so surprised. I always thought it was Evelina&mdash;always.
      And so did everybody else. She's so bright and pretty&mdash;it seemed so
      natural.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, you was all mistaken,” said Mr. Ramy obstinately.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I'm so sorry.”
     </p>
    <p>
      He rose, pushing back his chair.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You'd better think it over,” he said, in the large tone of a man who
      feels he may safely wait.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, no, no. It ain't any sorter use, Mr. Ramy. I don't never mean to
      marry. I get tired so easily&mdash;I'd be afraid of the work. And I have
      such awful headaches.” She paused, racking her brain for more convincing
      infirmities.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Headaches, do you?” said Mr. Ramy, turning back.
    </p>
    <p>
      “My, yes, awful ones, that I have to give right up to. Evelina has to do
      everything when I have one of them headaches. She has to bring me my tea
      in the mornings.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I'm sorry to hear it,” said Mr. Ramy.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Thank you kindly all the same,” Ann Eliza murmured. “And please don't&mdash;don't&mdash;”
       She stopped suddenly, looking at him through her tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, that's all right,” he answered. “Don't you fret, Miss Gunner. Folks
      have got to suit themselves.” She thought his tone had grown more resigned
      since she had spoken of her headaches.
    </p>
    <p>
      For some moments he stood looking at her with a hesitating eye, as though
      uncertain how to end their conversation; and at length she found courage
      to say (in the words of a novel she had once read): “I don't want this
      should make any difference between us.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, my, no,” said Mr. Ramy, absently picking up his hat.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You'll come in just the same?” she continued, nerving herself to the
      effort. “We'd miss you awfully if you didn't. Evelina, she&mdash;” She
      paused, torn between her desire to turn his thoughts to Evelina, and the
      dread of prematurely disclosing her sister's secret.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Don't Miss Evelina have no headaches?” Mr. Ramy suddenly asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      “My, no, never&mdash;well, not to speak of, anyway. She ain't had one for
      ages, and when Evelina <i>is</i> sick she won't never give in to it,” Ann Eliza
      declared, making some hurried adjustments with her conscience.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I wouldn't have thought that,” said Mr. Ramy.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I guess you don't know us as well as you thought you did.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, no, that's so; maybe I don't. I'll wish you good day, Miss Bunner”;
      and Mr. Ramy moved toward the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Good day, Mr. Ramy,” Ann Eliza answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      She felt unutterably thankful to be alone. She knew the crucial moment of
      her life had passed, and she was glad that she had not fallen below her
      own ideals. It had been a wonderful experience; and in spite of the tears
      on her cheeks she was not sorry to have known it. Two facts, however, took
      the edge from its perfection: that it had happened in the shop, and that
      she had not had on her black silk.
    </p>
    <p>
      She passed the next hour in a state of dreamy ecstasy. Something had
      entered into her life of which no subsequent empoverishment could rob it:
      she glowed with the same rich sense of possessorship that once, as a
      little girl, she had felt when her mother had given her a gold locket and
      she had sat up in bed in the dark to draw it from its hiding-place beneath
      her night-gown.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length a dread of Evelina's return began to mingle with these musings.
      How could she meet her younger sister's eye without betraying what had
      happened? She felt as though a visible glory lay on her, and she was glad
      that dusk had fallen when Evelina entered. But her fears were superfluous.
      Evelina, always self-absorbed, had of late lost all interest in the simple
      happenings of the shop, and Ann Eliza, with mingled mortification and
      relief, perceived that she was in no danger of being cross-questioned as
      to the events of the afternoon. She was glad of this; yet there was a
      touch of humiliation in finding that the portentous secret in her bosom
      did not visibly shine forth. It struck her as dull, and even slightly
      absurd, of Evelina not to know at last that they were equals.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART">
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    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      PART II
    </h2>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
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    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      VIII
    </h2>
    <p>
      Mr. Ramy, after a decent interval, returned to the shop; and Ann Eliza,
      when they met, was unable to detect whether the emotions which seethed
      under her black alpaca found an echo in his bosom. Outwardly he made no
      sign. He lit his pipe as placidly as ever and seemed to relapse without
      effort into the unruffled intimacy of old. Yet to Ann Eliza's initiated
      eye a change became gradually perceptible. She saw that he was beginning
      to look at her sister as he had looked at her on that momentous afternoon:
      she even discerned a secret significance in the turn of his talk with
      Evelina. Once he asked her abruptly if she should like to travel, and Ann
      Eliza saw that the flush on Evelina's cheek was reflected from the same
      fire which had scorched her own.
    </p>
    <p>
      So they drifted on through the sultry weeks of July. At that season the
      business of the little shop almost ceased, and one Saturday morning Mr.
      Ramy proposed that the sisters should lock up early and go with him for a
      sail down the bay in one of the Coney Island boats.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza saw the light in Evelina's eye and her resolve was instantly
      taken.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I guess I won't go, thank you kindly; but I'm sure my sister will be
      happy to.”
     </p>
    <p>
      She was pained by the perfunctory phrase with which Evelina urged her to
      accompany them; and still more by Mr. Ramy's silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      “No, I guess I won't go,” she repeated, rather in answer to herself than
      to them. “It's dreadfully hot and I've got a kinder headache.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, well, I wouldn't then,” said her sister hurriedly. “You'd better jest
      set here quietly and rest.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, I'll rest,” Ann Eliza assented.
    </p>
    <p>
      At two o'clock Mr. Ramy returned, and a moment later he and Evelina left
      the shop. Evelina had made herself another new bonnet for the occasion, a
      bonnet, Ann Eliza thought, almost too youthful in shape and colour. It was
      the first time it had ever occurred to her to criticize Evelina's taste,
      and she was frightened at the insidious change in her attitude toward her
      sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Ann Eliza, in later days, looked back on that afternoon she felt that
      there had been something prophetic in the quality of its solitude; it
      seemed to distill the triple essence of loneliness in which all her
      after-life was to be lived. No purchasers came; not a hand fell on the
      door-latch; and the tick of the clock in the back room ironically
      emphasized the passing of the empty hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina returned late and alone. Ann Eliza felt the coming crisis in the
      sound of her footstep, which wavered along as if not knowing on what it
      trod. The elder sister's affection had so passionately projected itself
      into her junior's fate that at such moments she seemed to be living two
      lives, her own and Evelina's; and her private longings shrank into silence
      at the sight of the other's hungry bliss. But it was evident that Evelina,
      never acutely alive to the emotional atmosphere about her, had no idea
      that her secret was suspected; and with an assumption of unconcern that
      would have made Ann Eliza smile if the pang had been less piercing, the
      younger sister prepared to confess herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      “What are you so busy about?” she said impatiently, as Ann Eliza, beneath
      the gas-jet, fumbled for the matches. “Ain't you even got time to ask me
      if I'd had a pleasant day?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza turned with a quiet smile. “I guess I don't have to. Seems to me
      it's pretty plain you have.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I don't know. I don't know <i>how</i> I feel&mdash;it's all so queer. I
      almost think I'd like to scream.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I guess you're tired.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “No, I ain't. It's not that. But it all happened so suddenly, and the boat
      was so crowded I thought everybody'd hear what he was saying.&mdash;Ann
      Eliza,” she broke out, “why on earth don't you ask me what I'm talking
      about?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, with a last effort of heroism, feigned a fond incomprehension.
    </p>
    <p>
      “What <i>are</i> you?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Why, I'm engaged to be married&mdash;so there! Now it's out! And it
      happened right on the boat; only to think of it! Of course I wasn't
      exactly surprised&mdash;I've known right along he was going to sooner or
      later&mdash;on'y somehow I didn't think of its happening to-day. I thought
      he'd never get up his courage. He said he was so 'fraid I'd say no&mdash;that's
      what kep' him so long from asking me. Well, I ain't said yes <i>yet</i>&mdash;leastways
      I told him I'd have to think it over; but I guess he knows. Oh, Ann Eliza,
      I'm so happy!” She hid the blinding brightness of her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, just then, would only let herself feel that she was glad. She
      drew down Evelina's hands and kissed her, and they held each other. When
      Evelina regained her voice she had a tale to tell which carried their
      vigil far into the night. Not a syllable, not a glance or gesture of
      Ramy's, was the elder sister spared; and with unconscious irony she found
      herself comparing the details of his proposal to her with those which
      Evelina was imparting with merciless prolixity.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next few days were taken up with the embarrassed adjustment of their
      new relation to Mr. Ramy and to each other. Ann Eliza's ardour carried her
      to new heights of self-effacement, and she invented late duties in the
      shop in order to leave Evelina and her suitor longer alone in the back
      room. Later on, when she tried to remember the details of those first
      days, few came back to her: she knew only that she got up each morning
      with the sense of having to push the leaden hours up the same long steep
      of pain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Ramy came daily now. Every evening he and his betrothed went out for a
      stroll around the Square, and when Evelina came in her cheeks were always
      pink. “He's kissed her under that tree at the corner, away from the
      lamp-post,” Ann Eliza said to herself, with sudden insight into
      unconjectured things. On Sundays they usually went for the whole afternoon
      to the Central Park, and Ann Eliza, from her seat in the mortal hush of
      the back room, followed step by step their long slow beatific walk.
    </p>
    <p>
      There had been, as yet, no allusion to their marriage, except that Evelina
      had once told her sister that Mr. Ramy wished them to invite Mrs.
      Hochmuller and Linda to the wedding. The mention of the laundress raised a
      half-forgotten fear in Ann Eliza, and she said in a tone of tentative
      appeal: “I guess if I was you I wouldn't want to be very great friends
      with Mrs. Hochmuller.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina glanced at her compassionately. “I guess if you was me you'd want
      to do everything you could to please the man you loved. It's lucky,” she
      added with glacial irony, “that I'm not too grand for Herman's friends.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh,” Ann Eliza protested, “that ain't what I mean&mdash;and you know it
      ain't. Only somehow the day we saw her I didn't think she seemed like the
      kinder person you'd want for a friend.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I guess a married woman's the best judge of such matters,” Evelina
      replied, as though she already walked in the light of her future state.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, after that, kept her own counsel. She saw that Evelina wanted
      her sympathy as little as her admonitions, and that already she counted
      for nothing in her sister's scheme of life. To Ann Eliza's idolatrous
      acceptance of the cruelties of fate this exclusion seemed both natural and
      just; but it caused her the most lively pain. She could not divest her
      love for Evelina of its passionate motherliness; no breath of reason could
      lower it to the cool temperature of sisterly affection.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was then passing, as she thought, through the novitiate of her pain;
      preparing, in a hundred experimental ways, for the solitude awaiting her
      when Evelina left. It was true that it would be a tempered loneliness.
      They would not be far apart. Evelina would “run in” daily from the
      clock-maker's; they would doubtless take supper with her on Sundays. But
      already Ann Eliza guessed with what growing perfunctoriness her sister
      would fulfill these obligations; she even foresaw the day when, to get
      news of Evelina, she should have to lock the shop at nightfall and go
      herself to Mr. Ramy's door. But on that contingency she would not dwell.
      “They can come to me when they want to&mdash;they'll always find me here,”
       she simply said to herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      One evening Evelina came in flushed and agitated from her stroll around
      the Square. Ann Eliza saw at once that something had happened; but the new
      habit of reticence checked her question.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had not long to wait. “Oh, Ann Eliza, on'y to think what he says&mdash;”
       (the pronoun stood exclusively for Mr. Ramy). “I declare I'm so upset I
      thought the people in the Square would notice me. Don't I look queer? He
      wants to get married right off&mdash;this very next week.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Next week?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes. So's we can move out to St. Louis right away.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Him and you&mdash;move out to St. Louis?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I don't know as it would be natural for him to want to go out there
      without me,” Evelina simpered. “But it's all so sudden I don't know what
      to think. He only got the letter this morning. <i>Do</i> I look queer, Ann
      Eliza?” Her eye was roving for the mirror.
    </p>
    <p>
      “No, you don't,” said Ann Eliza almost harshly.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, it's a mercy,” Evelina pursued with a tinge of disappointment.
      “It's a regular miracle I didn't faint right out there in the Square.
      Herman's so thoughtless&mdash;he just put the letter into my hand without
      a word. It's from a big firm out there&mdash;the Tiff'ny of St. Louis, he
      says it is&mdash;offering him a place in their clock-department. Seems
      they heard of him through a German friend of his that's settled out there.
      It's a splendid opening, and if he gives satisfaction they'll raise him at
      the end of the year.”
     </p>
    <p>
      She paused, flushed with the importance of the situation, which seemed to
      lift her once for all above the dull level of her former life.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Then you'll have to go?” came at last from Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina stared. “You wouldn't have me interfere with his prospects, would
      you?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “No&mdash;no. I on'y meant&mdash;has it got to be so soon?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Right away, I tell you&mdash;next week. Ain't it awful?” blushed the
      bride.
    </p>
    <p>
      Well, this was what happened to mothers. They bore it, Ann Eliza mused; so
      why not she? Ah, but they had their own chance first; she had had no
      chance at all. And now this life which she had made her own was going from
      her forever; had gone, already, in the inner and deeper sense, and was
      soon to vanish in even its outward nearness, its surface-communion of
      voice and eye. At that moment even the thought of Evelina's happiness
      refused her its consolatory ray; or its light, if she saw it, was too
      remote to warm her. The thirst for a personal and inalienable tie, for
      pangs and problems of her own, was parching Ann Eliza's soul: it seemed to
      her that she could never again gather strength to look her loneliness in
      the face.
    </p>
    <p>
      The trivial obligations of the moment came to her aid. Nursed in idleness
      her grief would have mastered her; but the needs of the shop and the back
      room, and the preparations for Evelina's marriage, kept the tyrant under.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Mellins, true to her anticipations, had been called on to aid in the
      making of the wedding dress, and she and Ann Eliza were bending one
      evening over the breadths of pearl-grey cashmere which in spite of the
      dress-maker's prophetic vision of gored satin, had been judged most
      suitable, when Evelina came into the room alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza had already had occasion to notice that it was a bad sign when
      Mr. Ramy left his affianced at the door. It generally meant that Evelina
      had something disturbing to communicate, and Ann Eliza's first glance told
      her that this time the news was grave.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Mellins, who sat with her back to the door and her head bent over her
      sewing, started as Evelina came around to the opposite side of the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Mercy, Miss Evelina! I declare I thought you was a ghost, the way you
      crep' in. I had a customer once up in Forty-ninth Street&mdash;a lovely
      young woman with a thirty-six bust and a waist you could ha' put into her
      wedding ring&mdash;and her husband, he crep' up behind her that way jest
      for a joke, and frightened her into a fit, and when she come to she was a
      raving maniac, and had to be taken to Bloomingdale with two doctors and a
      nurse to hold her in the carriage, and a lovely baby on'y six weeks old&mdash;and
      there she is to this day, poor creature.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I didn't mean to startle you,” said Evelina.
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat down on the nearest chair, and as the lamp-light fell on her face
      Ann Eliza saw that she had been crying.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You do look dead-beat,” Miss Mellins resumed, after a pause of
      soul-probing scrutiny. “I guess Mr. Ramy lugs you round that Square too
      often. You'll walk your legs off if you ain't careful. Men don't never
      consider&mdash;they're all alike. Why, I had a cousin once that was
      engaged to a book-agent&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Maybe we'd better put away the work for to-night, Miss Mellins,” Ann
      Eliza interposed. “I guess what Evelina wants is a good night's rest.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “That's so,” assented the dress-maker. “Have you got the back breadths run
      together, Miss Bunner? Here's the sleeves. I'll pin 'em together.” She
      drew a cluster of pins from her mouth, in which she seemed to secrete them
      as squirrels stow away nuts. “There,” she said, rolling up her work, “you
      go right away to bed, Miss Evelina, and we'll set up a little later
      to-morrow night. I guess you're a mite nervous, ain't you? I know when my
      turn comes I'll be scared to death.”
     </p>
    <p>
      With this arch forecast she withdrew, and Ann Eliza, returning to the back
      room, found Evelina still listlessly seated by the table. True to her new
      policy of silence, the elder sister set about folding up the bridal dress;
      but suddenly Evelina said in a harsh unnatural voice: “There ain't any use
      in going on with that.”
     </p>
    <p>
      The folds slipped from Ann Eliza's hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Evelina Bunner&mdash;what you mean?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Jest what I say. It's put off.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Put off&mdash;what's put off?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Our getting married. He can't take me to St. Louis. He ain't got money
      enough.” She brought the words out in the monotonous tone of a child
      reciting a lesson.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza picked up another breadth of cashmere and began to smooth it
      out. “I don't understand,” she said at length.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, it's plain enough. The journey's fearfully expensive, and we've got
      to have something left to start with when we get out there. We've counted
      up, and he ain't got the money to do it&mdash;that's all.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “But I thought he was going right into a splendid place.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “So he is; but the salary's pretty low the first year, and board's very
      high in St. Louis. He's jest got another letter from his German friend,
      and he's been figuring it out, and he's afraid to chance it. He'll have to
      go alone.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “But there's your money&mdash;have you forgotten that? The hundred dollars
      in the bank.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina made an impatient movement. “Of course I ain't forgotten it. On'y
      it ain't enough. It would all have to go into buying furniture, and if he
      was took sick and lost his place again we wouldn't have a cent left. He
      says he's got to lay by another hundred dollars before he'll be willing to
      take me out there.”
     </p>
    <p>
      For a while Ann Eliza pondered this surprising statement; then she
      ventured: “Seems to me he might have thought of it before.”
     </p>
    <p>
      In an instant Evelina was aflame. “I guess he knows what's right as well
      as you or me. I'd sooner die than be a burden to him.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza made no answer. The clutch of an unformulated doubt had checked
      the words on her lips. She had meant, on the day of her sister's marriage,
      to give Evelina the other half of their common savings; but something
      warned her not to say so now.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sisters undressed without farther words. After they had gone to bed,
      and the light had been put out, the sound of Evelina's weeping came to Ann
      Eliza in the darkness, but she lay motionless on her own side of the bed,
      out of contact with her sister's shaken body. Never had she felt so coldly
      remote from Evelina.
    </p>
    <p>
      The hours of the night moved slowly, ticked off with wearisome insistence
      by the clock which had played so prominent a part in their lives.
      Evelina's sobs still stirred the bed at gradually lengthening intervals,
      till at length Ann Eliza thought she slept. But with the dawn the eyes of
      the sisters met, and Ann Eliza's courage failed her as she looked in
      Evelina's face.
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat up in bed and put out a pleading hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Don't cry so, dearie. Don't.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, I can't bear it, I can't bear it,” Evelina moaned.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza stroked her quivering shoulder. “Don't, don't,” she repeated.
      “If you take the other hundred, won't that be enough? I always meant to
      give it to you. On'y I didn't want to tell you till your wedding day.”
     </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      IX
    </h2>
    <p>
      Evelina's marriage took place on the appointed day. It was celebrated in
      the evening, in the chantry of the church which the sisters attended, and
      after it was over the few guests who had been present repaired to the
      Bunner Sisters' basement, where a wedding supper awaited them. Ann Eliza,
      aided by Miss Mellins and Mrs. Hawkins, and consciously supported by the
      sentimental interest of the whole street, had expended her utmost energy
      on the decoration of the shop and the back room. On the table a vase of
      white chrysanthemums stood between a dish of oranges and bananas and an
      iced wedding-cake wreathed with orange-blossoms of the bride's own making.
      Autumn leaves studded with paper roses festooned the what-not and the
      chromo of the Rock of Ages, and a wreath of yellow immortelles was twined
      about the clock which Evelina revered as the mysterious agent of her
      happiness.
    </p>
    <p>
      At the table sat Miss Mellins, profusely spangled and bangled, her head
      sewing-girl, a pale young thing who had helped with Evelina's outfit, Mr.
      and Mrs. Hawkins, with Johnny, their eldest boy, and Mrs. Hochmuller and
      her daughter.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Hochmuller's large blonde personality seemed to pervade the room to
      the effacement of the less amply-proportioned guests. It was rendered more
      impressive by a dress of crimson poplin that stood out from her in
      organ-like folds; and Linda, whom Ann Eliza had remembered as an uncouth
      child with a sly look about the eyes, surprised her by a sudden blossoming
      into feminine grace such as sometimes follows on a gawky girlhood. The
      Hochmullers, in fact, struck the dominant note in the entertainment.
      Beside them Evelina, unusually pale in her grey cashmere and white bonnet,
      looked like a faintly washed sketch beside a brilliant chromo; and Mr.
      Ramy, doomed to the traditional insignificance of the bridegroom's part,
      made no attempt to rise above his situation. Even Miss Mellins sparkled
      and jingled in vain in the shadow of Mrs. Hochmuller's crimson bulk; and
      Ann Eliza, with a sense of vague foreboding, saw that the wedding feast
      centred about the two guests she had most wished to exclude from it. What
      was said or done while they all sat about the table she never afterward
      recalled: the long hours remained in her memory as a whirl of high colours
      and loud voices, from which the pale presence of Evelina now and then
      emerged like a drowned face on a sunset-dabbled sea.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next morning Mr. Ramy and his wife started for St. Louis, and Ann
      Eliza was left alone. Outwardly the first strain of parting was tempered
      by the arrival of Miss Mellins, Mrs. Hawkins and Johnny, who dropped in to
      help in the ungarlanding and tidying up of the back room. Ann Eliza was
      duly grateful for their kindness, but the “talking over” on which they had
      evidently counted was Dead Sea fruit on her lips; and just beyond the
      familiar warmth of their presences she saw the form of Solitude at her
      door.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza was but a small person to harbour so great a guest, and a
      trembling sense of insufficiency possessed her. She had no high musings to
      offer to the new companion of her hearth. Every one of her thoughts had
      hitherto turned to Evelina and shaped itself in homely easy words; of the
      mighty speech of silence she knew not the earliest syllable.
    </p>
    <p>
      Everything in the back room and the shop, on the second day after
      Evelina's going, seemed to have grown coldly unfamiliar. The whole aspect
      of the place had changed with the changed conditions of Ann Eliza's life.
      The first customer who opened the shop-door startled her like a ghost; and
      all night she lay tossing on her side of the bed, sinking now and then
      into an uncertain doze from which she would suddenly wake to reach out her
      hand for Evelina. In the new silence surrounding her the walls and
      furniture found voice, frightening her at dusk and midnight with strange
      sighs and stealthy whispers. Ghostly hands shook the window shutters or
      rattled at the outer latch, and once she grew cold at the sound of a step
      like Evelina's stealing through the dark shop to die out on the threshold.
      In time, of course, she found an explanation for these noises, telling
      herself that the bedstead was warping, that Miss Mellins trod heavily
      overhead, or that the thunder of passing beer-waggons shook the
      door-latch; but the hours leading up to these conclusions were full of the
      floating terrors that harden into fixed foreboding. Worst of all were the
      solitary meals, when she absently continued to set aside the largest slice
      of pie for Evelina, and to let the tea grow cold while she waited for her
      sister to help herself to the first cup. Miss Mellins, coming in on one of
      these sad repasts, suggested the acquisition of a cat; but Ann Eliza shook
      her head. She had never been used to animals, and she felt the vague
      shrinking of the pious from creatures divided from her by the abyss of
      soullessness.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length, after ten empty days, Evelina's first letter came.
    </p>
    <p>
      “<span class="smcap">My dear Sister</span>,” she wrote, in her pinched Spencerian hand, “it seems
      strange to be in this great City so far from home alone with him I have
      chosen for life, but marriage has its solemn duties which those who are
      not can never hope to understand, and happier perhaps for this reason,
      life for them has only simple tasks and pleasures, but those who must take
      thought for others must be prepared to do their duty in whatever station
      it has pleased the Almighty to call them. Not that I have cause to
      complain, my dear Husband is all love and devotion, but being absent all
      day at his business how can I help but feel lonesome at times, as the poet
      says it is hard for they that love to live apart, and I often wonder, my
      dear Sister, how you are getting along alone in the store, may you never
      experience the feelings of solitude I have underwent since I came here. We
      are boarding now, but soon expect to find rooms and change our place of
      Residence, then I shall have all the care of a household to bear, but such
      is the fate of those who join their Lot with others, they cannot hope to
      escape from the burdens of Life, nor would I ask it, I would not live
      alway but while I live would always pray for strength to do my duty. This
      city is not near as large or handsome as New York, but had my lot been
      cast in a Wilderness I hope I should not repine, such never was my nature,
      and they who exchange their independence for the sweet name of Wife must
      be prepared to find all is not gold that glitters, nor I would not expect
      like you to drift down the stream of Life unfettered and serene as a
      Summer cloud, such is not my fate, but come what may will always find in
      me a resigned and prayerful Spirit, and hoping this finds you as well as
      it leaves me, I remain, my dear Sister,
    </p>
    <p>
      “Yours truly,
    </p>
    <p>
      “<span class="smcap">Evelina B. Ramy</span>.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza had always secretly admired the oratorical and impersonal tone
      of Evelina's letters; but the few she had previously read, having been
      addressed to school-mates or distant relatives, had appeared in the light
      of literary compositions rather than as records of personal experience.
      Now she could not but wish that Evelina had laid aside her swelling
      periods for a style more suited to the chronicling of homely incidents.
      She read the letter again and again, seeking for a clue to what her sister
      was really doing and thinking; but after each reading she emerged
      impressed but unenlightened from the labyrinth of Evelina's eloquence.
    </p>
    <p>
      During the early winter she received two or three more letters of the same
      kind, each enclosing in its loose husk of rhetoric a smaller kernel of
      fact. By dint of patient interlinear study, Ann Eliza gathered from them
      that Evelina and her husband, after various costly experiments in
      boarding, had been reduced to a tenement-house flat; that living in St.
      Louis was more expensive than they had supposed, and that Mr. Ramy was
      kept out late at night (why, at a jeweller's, Ann Eliza wondered?) and
      found his position less satisfactory than he had been led to expect.
      Toward February the letters fell off; and finally they ceased to come.
    </p>
    <p>
      At first Ann Eliza wrote, shyly but persistently, entreating for more
      frequent news; then, as one appeal after another was swallowed up in the
      mystery of Evelina's protracted silence, vague fears began to assail the
      elder sister. Perhaps Evelina was ill, and with no one to nurse her but a
      man who could not even make himself a cup of tea! Ann Eliza recalled the
      layer of dust in Mr. Ramy's shop, and pictures of domestic disorder
      mingled with the more poignant vision of her sister's illness. But surely
      if Evelina were ill Mr. Ramy would have written. He wrote a small neat
      hand, and epistolary communication was not an insuperable embarrassment to
      him. The too probable alternative was that both the unhappy pair had been
      prostrated by some disease which left them powerless to summon her&mdash;for
      summon her they surely would, Ann Eliza with unconscious cynicism
      reflected, if she or her small economies could be of use to them! The more
      she strained her eyes into the mystery, the darker it grew; and her lack
      of initiative, her inability to imagine what steps might be taken to trace
      the lost in distant places, left her benumbed and helpless.
    </p>
    <p>
      At last there floated up from some depth of troubled memory the name of
      the firm of St. Louis jewellers by whom Mr. Ramy was employed. After much
      hesitation, and considerable effort, she addressed to them a timid request
      for news of her brother-in-law; and sooner than she could have hoped the
      answer reached her.
    </p>
    <p>
      “<span class="smcap">Dear Madam</span>,
    </p>
    <p>
      “In reply to yours of the 29th ult. we beg to state the party you refer to
      was discharged from our employ a month ago. We are sorry we are unable to
      furnish you wish his address.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Yours Respectfully,
    </p>
    <p>
      “<span class="smcap">Ludwig And Hammerbusch</span>.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza read and re-read the curt statement in a stupor of distress. She
      had lost her last trace of Evelina. All that night she lay awake,
      revolving the stupendous project of going to St. Louis in search of her
      sister; but though she pieced together her few financial possibilities
      with the ingenuity of a brain used to fitting odd scraps into patch-work
      quilts, she woke to the cold daylight fact that she could not raise the
      money for her fare. Her wedding gift to Evelina had left her without any
      resources beyond her daily earnings, and these had steadily dwindled as
      the winter passed. She had long since renounced her weekly visit to the
      butcher, and had reduced her other expenses to the narrowest measure; but
      the most systematic frugality had not enabled her to put by any money. In
      spite of her dogged efforts to maintain the prosperity of the little shop,
      her sister's absence had already told on its business. Now that Ann Eliza
      had to carry the bundles to the dyer's herself, the customers who called
      in her absence, finding the shop locked, too often went elsewhere.
      Moreover, after several stern but unavailing efforts, she had had to give
      up the trimming of bonnets, which in Evelina's hands had been the most
      lucrative as well as the most interesting part of the business. This
      change, to the passing female eye, robbed the shop window of its chief
      attraction; and when painful experience had convinced the regular
      customers of the Bunner Sisters of Ann Eliza's lack of millinery skill
      they began to lose faith in her ability to curl a feather or even “freshen
      up” a bunch of flowers. The time came when Ann Eliza had almost made up
      her mind to speak to the lady with puffed sleeves, who had always looked
      at her so kindly, and had once ordered a hat of Evelina. Perhaps the lady
      with puffed sleeves would be able to get her a little plain sewing to do;
      or she might recommend the shop to friends. Ann Eliza, with this
      possibility in view, rummaged out of a drawer the fly-blown remainder of
      the business cards which the sisters had ordered in the first flush of
      their commercial adventure; but when the lady with puffed sleeves finally
      appeared she was in deep mourning, and wore so sad a look that Ann Eliza
      dared not speak. She came in to buy some spools of black thread and silk,
      and in the doorway she turned back to say: “I am going away to-morrow for
      a long time. I hope you will have a pleasant winter.” And the door shut on
      her.
    </p>
    <p>
      One day not long after this it occurred to Ann Eliza to go to Hoboken in
      quest of Mrs. Hochmuller. Much as she shrank from pouring her distress
      into that particular ear, her anxiety had carried her beyond such
      reluctance; but when she began to think the matter over she was faced by a
      new difficulty. On the occasion of her only visit to Mrs. Hochmuller, she
      and Evelina had suffered themselves to be led there by Mr. Ramy; and Ann
      Eliza now perceived that she did not even know the name of the laundress's
      suburb, much less that of the street in which she lived. But she must have
      news of Evelina, and no obstacle was great enough to thwart her.
    </p>
    <p>
      Though she longed to turn to some one for advice she disliked to expose
      her situation to Miss Mellins's searching eye, and at first she could
      think of no other confidant. Then she remembered Mrs. Hawkins, or rather
      her husband, who, though Ann Eliza had always thought him a dull
      uneducated man, was probably gifted with the mysterious masculine faculty
      of finding out people's addresses. It went hard with Ann Eliza to trust
      her secret even to the mild ear of Mrs. Hawkins, but at least she was
      spared the cross-examination to which the dress-maker would have subjected
      her. The accumulating pressure of domestic cares had so crushed in Mrs.
      Hawkins any curiosity concerning the affairs of others that she received
      her visitor's confidence with an almost masculine indifference, while she
      rocked her teething baby on one arm and with the other tried to check the
      acrobatic impulses of the next in age.
    </p>
    <p>
      “My, my,” she simply said as Ann Eliza ended. “Keep still now, Arthur:
      Miss Bunner don't want you to jump up and down on her foot to-day. And
      what are you gaping at, Johnny? Run right off and play,” she added,
      turning sternly to her eldest, who, because he was the least naughty,
      usually bore the brunt of her wrath against the others.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, perhaps Mr. Hawkins can help you,” Mrs. Hawkins continued
      meditatively, while the children, after scattering at her bidding,
      returned to their previous pursuits like flies settling down on the spot
      from which an exasperated hand has swept them. “I'll send him right round
      the minute he comes in, and you can tell him the whole story. I wouldn't
      wonder but what he can find that Mrs. Hochmuller's address in the
      d'rectory. I know they've got one where he works.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I'd be real thankful if he could,” Ann Eliza murmured, rising from her
      seat with the factitious sense of lightness that comes from imparting a
      long-hidden dread.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      X
    </h2>
    <p>
      Mr. Hawkins proved himself worthy of his wife's faith in his capacity. He
      learned from Ann Eliza as much as she could tell him about Mrs. Hochmuller
      and returned the next evening with a scrap of paper bearing her address,
      beneath which Johnny (the family scribe) had written in a large round hand
      the names of the streets that led there from the ferry.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza lay awake all that night, repeating over and over again the
      directions Mr. Hawkins had given her. He was a kind man, and she knew he
      would willingly have gone with her to Hoboken; indeed she read in his
      timid eye the half-formed intention of offering to accompany her&mdash;but
      on such an errand she preferred to go alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next Sunday, accordingly, she set out early, and without much trouble
      found her way to the ferry. Nearly a year had passed since her previous
      visit to Mrs. Hochmuller, and a chilly April breeze smote her face as she
      stepped on the boat. Most of the passengers were huddled together in the
      cabin, and Ann Eliza shrank into its obscurest corner, shivering under the
      thin black mantle which had seemed so hot in July. She began to feel a
      little bewildered as she stepped ashore, but a paternal policeman put her
      into the right car, and as in a dream she found herself retracing the way
      to Mrs. Hochmuller's door. She had told the conductor the name of the
      street at which she wished to get out, and presently she stood in the
      biting wind at the corner near the beer-saloon, where the sun had once
      beat down on her so fiercely. At length an empty car appeared, its yellow
      flank emblazoned with the name of Mrs. Hochmuller's suburb, and Ann Eliza
      was presently jolting past the narrow brick houses islanded between vacant
      lots like giant piles in a desolate lagoon. When the car reached the end
      of its journey she got out and stood for some time trying to remember
      which turn Mr. Ramy had taken. She had just made up her mind to ask the
      car-driver when he shook the reins on the backs of his lean horses, and
      the car, still empty, jogged away toward Hoboken.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, left alone by the roadside, began to move cautiously forward,
      looking about for a small red house with a gable overhung by an elm-tree;
      but everything about her seemed unfamiliar and forbidding. One or two
      surly looking men slouched past with inquisitive glances, and she could
      not make up her mind to stop and speak to them.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length a tow-headed boy came out of a swinging door suggestive of
      illicit conviviality, and to him Ann Eliza ventured to confide her
      difficulty. The offer of five cents fired him with an instant willingness
      to lead her to Mrs. Hochmuller, and he was soon trotting past the
      stone-cutter's yard with Ann Eliza in his wake.
    </p>
    <p>
      Another turn in the road brought them to the little red house, and having
      rewarded her guide Ann Eliza unlatched the gate and walked up to the door.
      Her heart was beating violently, and she had to lean against the door-post
      to compose her twitching lips: she had not known till that moment how much
      it was going to hurt her to speak of Evelina to Mrs. Hochmuller. As her
      agitation subsided she began to notice how much the appearance of the
      house had changed. It was not only that winter had stripped the elm, and
      blackened the flower-borders: the house itself had a debased and deserted
      air. The window-panes were cracked and dirty, and one or two shutters
      swung dismally on loosened hinges.
    </p>
    <p>
      She rang several times before the door was opened. At length an Irish
      woman with a shawl over her head and a baby in her arms appeared on the
      threshold, and glancing past her into the narrow passage Ann Eliza saw
      that Mrs. Hochmuller's neat abode had deteriorated as much within as
      without.
    </p>
    <p>
      At the mention of the name the woman stared. “Mrs. who, did ye say?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Mrs. Hochmuller. This is surely her house?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “No, it ain't neither,” said the woman turning away.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, but wait, please,” Ann Eliza entreated. “I can't be mistaken. I mean
      the Mrs. Hochmuller who takes in washing. I came out to see her last
      June.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, the Dutch washerwoman is it&mdash;her that used to live here? She's
      been gone two months and more. It's Mike McNulty lives here now. Whisht!”
       to the baby, who had squared his mouth for a howl.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza's knees grew weak. “Mrs. Hochmuller gone? But where has she
      gone? She must be somewhere round here. Can't you tell me?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Sure an' I can't,” said the woman. “She wint away before iver we come.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Dalia Geoghegan, will ye bring the choild in out av the cowld?” cried an
      irate voice from within.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Please wait&mdash;oh, please wait,” Ann Eliza insisted. “You see I must
      find Mrs. Hochmuller.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Why don't ye go and look for her thin?” the woman returned, slamming the
      door in her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      She stood motionless on the door-step, dazed by the immensity of her
      disappointment, till a burst of loud voices inside the house drove her
      down the path and out of the gate.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even then she could not grasp what had happened, and pausing in the road
      she looked back at the house, half hoping that Mrs. Hochmuller's once
      detested face might appear at one of the grimy windows.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was roused by an icy wind that seemed to spring up suddenly from the
      desolate scene, piercing her thin dress like gauze; and turning away she
      began to retrace her steps. She thought of enquiring for Mrs. Hochmuller
      at some of the neighbouring houses, but their look was so unfriendly that
      she walked on without making up her mind at which door to ring. When she
      reached the horse-car terminus a car was just moving off toward Hoboken,
      and for nearly an hour she had to wait on the corner in the bitter wind.
      Her hands and feet were stiff with cold when the car at length loomed into
      sight again, and she thought of stopping somewhere on the way to the ferry
      for a cup of tea; but before the region of lunch-rooms was reached she had
      grown so sick and dizzy that the thought of food was repulsive. At length
      she found herself on the ferry-boat, in the soothing stuffiness of the
      crowded cabin; then came another interval of shivering on a street-corner,
      another long jolting journey in a “cross-town” car that smelt of damp
      straw and tobacco; and lastly, in the cold spring dusk, she unlocked her
      door and groped her way through the shop to her fireless bedroom.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next morning Mrs. Hawkins, dropping in to hear the result of the trip,
      found Ann Eliza sitting behind the counter wrapped in an old shawl.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Why, Miss Bunner, you're sick! You must have fever&mdash;your face is
      just as red!”
     </p>
    <p>
      “It's nothing. I guess I caught cold yesterday on the ferry-boat,” Ann
      Eliza acknowledged.
    </p>
    <p>
      “And it's jest like a vault in here!” Mrs. Hawkins rebuked her. “Let me
      feel your hand&mdash;it's burning. Now, Miss Bunner, you've got to go
      right to bed this very minute.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, but I can't, Mrs. Hawkins.” Ann Eliza attempted a wan smile. “You
      forget there ain't nobody but me to tend the store.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I guess you won't tend it long neither, if you ain't careful,” Mrs.
      Hawkins grimly rejoined. Beneath her placid exterior she cherished a
      morbid passion for disease and death, and the sight of Ann Eliza's
      suffering had roused her from her habitual indifference. “There ain't so
      many folks comes to the store anyhow,” she went on with unconscious
      cruelty, “and I'll go right up and see if Miss Mellins can't spare one of
      her girls.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, too weary to resist, allowed Mrs. Hawkins to put her to bed and
      make a cup of tea over the stove, while Miss Mellins, always
      good-naturedly responsive to any appeal for help, sent down the weak-eyed
      little girl to deal with hypothetical customers.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, having so far abdicated her independence, sank into sudden
      apathy. As far as she could remember, it was the first time in her life
      that she had been taken care of instead of taking care, and there was a
      momentary relief in the surrender. She swallowed the tea like an obedient
      child, allowed a poultice to be applied to her aching chest and uttered no
      protest when a fire was kindled in the rarely used grate; but as Mrs.
      Hawkins bent over to “settle” her pillows she raised herself on her elbow
      to whisper: “Oh, Mrs. Hawkins, Mrs. Hochmuller warn't there.” The tears
      rolled down her cheeks.
    </p>
    <p>
      “She warn't there? Has she moved?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Over two months ago&mdash;and they don't know where she's gone. Oh
      what'll I do, Mrs. Hawkins?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “There, there, Miss Bunner. You lay still and don't fret. I'll ask Mr.
      Hawkins soon as ever he comes home.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza murmured her gratitude, and Mrs. Hawkins, bending down, kissed
      her on the forehead. “Don't you fret,” she repeated, in the voice with
      which she soothed her children.
    </p>
    <p>
      For over a week Ann Eliza lay in bed, faithfully nursed by her two
      neighbours, while the weak-eyed child, and the pale sewing girl who had
      helped to finish Evelina's wedding dress, took turns in minding the shop.
      Every morning, when her friends appeared, Ann Eliza lifted her head to
      ask: “Is there a letter?” and at their gentle negative sank back in
      silence. Mrs. Hawkins, for several days, spoke no more of her promise to
      consult her husband as to the best way of tracing Mrs. Hochmuller; and
      dread of fresh disappointment kept Ann Eliza from bringing up the subject.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the following Sunday evening, as she sat for the first time bolstered
      up in her rocking-chair near the stove, while Miss Mellins studied the
      Police Gazette beneath the lamp, there came a knock on the shop-door and
      Mr. Hawkins entered.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza's first glance at his plain friendly face showed her he had news
      to give, but though she no longer attempted to hide her anxiety from Miss
      Mellins, her lips trembled too much to let her speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Good evening, Miss Bunner,” said Mr. Hawkins in his dragging voice. “I've
      been over to Hoboken all day looking round for Mrs. Hochmuller.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, Mr. Hawkins&mdash;you <i>have</i>?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I made a thorough search, but I'm sorry to say it was no use. She's left
      Hoboken&mdash;moved clear away, and nobody seems to know where.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “It was real good of you, Mr. Hawkins.” Ann Eliza's voice struggled up in
      a faint whisper through the submerging tide of her disappointment.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Hawkins, in his embarrassed sense of being the bringer of bad news,
      stood before her uncertainly; then he turned to go. “No trouble at all,”
       he paused to assure her from the doorway.
    </p>
    <p>
      She wanted to speak again, to detain him, to ask him to advise her; but
      the words caught in her throat and she lay back silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next day she got up early, and dressed and bonneted herself with
      twitching fingers. She waited till the weak-eyed child appeared, and
      having laid on her minute instructions as to the care of the shop, she
      slipped out into the street. It had occurred to her in one of the weary
      watches of the previous night that she might go to Tiffany's and make
      enquiries about Ramy's past. Possibly in that way she might obtain some
      information that would suggest a new way of reaching Evelina. She was
      guiltily aware that Mrs. Hawkins and Miss Mellins would be angry with her
      for venturing out of doors, but she knew she should never feel any better
      till she had news of Evelina.
    </p>
    <p>
      The morning air was sharp, and as she turned to face the wind she felt so
      weak and unsteady that she wondered if she should ever get as far as Union
      Square; but by walking very slowly, and standing still now and then when
      she could do so without being noticed, she found herself at last before
      the jeweller's great glass doors.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was still so early that there were no purchasers in the shop, and she
      felt herself the centre of innumerable unemployed eyes as she moved
      forward between long lines of show-cases glittering with diamonds and
      silver.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was glancing about in the hope of finding the clock-department without
      having to approach one of the impressive gentlemen who paced the empty
      aisles, when she attracted the attention of one of the most impressive of
      the number.
    </p>
    <p>
      The formidable benevolence with which he enquired what he could do for her
      made her almost despair of explaining herself; but she finally
      disentangled from a flurry of wrong beginnings the request to be shown to
      the clock-department.
    </p>
    <p>
      The gentleman considered her thoughtfully. “May I ask what style of clock
      you are looking for? Would it be for a wedding-present, or&mdash;?”
     </p>
    <p>
      The irony of the allusion filled Ann Eliza's veins with sudden strength.
      “I don't want to buy a clock at all. I want to see the head of the
      department.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Mr. Loomis?” His stare still weighed her&mdash;then he seemed to brush
      aside the problem she presented as beneath his notice. “Oh, certainly.
      Take the elevator to the second floor. Next aisle to the left.” He waved
      her down the endless perspective of show-cases.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza followed the line of his lordly gesture, and a swift ascent
      brought her to a great hall full of the buzzing and booming of thousands
      of clocks. Whichever way she looked, clocks stretched away from her in
      glittering interminable vistas: clocks of all sizes and voices, from the
      bell-throated giant of the hallway to the chirping dressing-table toy;
      tall clocks of mahogany and brass with cathedral chimes; clocks of bronze,
      glass, porcelain, of every possible size, voice and configuration; and
      between their serried ranks, along the polished floor of the aisles, moved
      the languid forms of other gentlemanly floor-walkers, waiting for their
      duties to begin.
    </p>
    <p>
      One of them soon approached, and Ann Eliza repeated her request. He
      received it affably.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Mr. Loomis? Go right down to the office at the other end.” He pointed to
      a kind of box of ground glass and highly polished panelling.
    </p>
    <p>
      As she thanked him he turned to one of his companions and said something
      in which she caught the name of Mr. Loomis, and which was received with an
      appreciative chuckle. She suspected herself of being the object of the
      pleasantry, and straightened her thin shoulders under her mantle.
    </p>
    <p>
      The door of the office stood open, and within sat a gray-bearded man at a
      desk. He looked up kindly, and again she asked for Mr. Loomis.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I'm Mr. Loomis. What can I do for you?”
     </p>
    <p>
      He was much less portentous than the others, though she guessed him to be
      above them in authority; and encouraged by his tone she seated herself on
      the edge of the chair he waved her to.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I hope you'll excuse my troubling you, sir. I came to ask if you could
      tell me anything about Mr. Herman Ramy. He was employed here in the
      clock-department two or three years ago.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Loomis showed no recognition of the name.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Ramy? When was he discharged?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I don't har'ly know. He was very sick, and when he got well his place had
      been filled. He married my sister last October and they went to St. Louis,
      I ain't had any news of them for over two months, and she's my only
      sister, and I'm most crazy worrying about her.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I see.” Mr. Loomis reflected. “In what capacity was Ramy employed here?”
       he asked after a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      “He&mdash;he told us that he was one of the heads of the
      clock-department,” Ann Eliza stammered, overswept by a sudden doubt.
    </p>
    <p>
      “That was probably a slight exaggeration. But I can tell you about him by
      referring to our books. The name again?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Ramy&mdash;Herman Ramy.”
     </p>
    <p>
      There ensued a long silence, broken only by the flutter of leaves as Mr.
      Loomis turned over his ledgers. Presently he looked up, keeping his finger
      between the pages.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Here it is&mdash;Herman Ramy. He was one of our ordinary workmen, and
      left us three years and a half ago last June.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “On account of sickness?” Ann Eliza faltered.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Loomis appeared to hesitate; then he said: “I see no mention of
      sickness.” Ann Eliza felt his compassionate eyes on her again. “Perhaps
      I'd better tell you the truth. He was discharged for drug-taking. A
      capable workman, but we couldn't keep him straight. I'm sorry to have to
      tell you this, but it seems fairer, since you say you're anxious about
      your sister.”
     </p>
    <p>
      The polished sides of the office vanished from Ann Eliza's sight, and the
      cackle of the innumerable clocks came to her like the yell of waves in a
      storm. She tried to speak but could not; tried to get to her feet, but the
      floor was gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I'm very sorry,” Mr. Loomis repeated, closing the ledger. “I remember the
      man perfectly now. He used to disappear every now and then, and turn up
      again in a state that made him useless for days.”
     </p>
    <p>
      As she listened, Ann Eliza recalled the day when she had come on Mr. Ramy
      sitting in abject dejection behind his counter. She saw again the blurred
      unrecognizing eyes he had raised to her, the layer of dust over everything
      in the shop, and the green bronze clock in the window representing a
      Newfoundland dog with his paw on a book. She stood up slowly.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Thank you. I'm sorry to have troubled you.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “It was no trouble. You say Ramy married your sister last October?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, sir; and they went to St. Louis right afterward. I don't know how to
      find her. I thought maybe somebody here might know about him.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, possibly some of the workmen might. Leave me your name and I'll
      send you word if I get on his track.”
     </p>
    <p>
      He handed her a pencil, and she wrote down her address; then she walked
      away blindly between the clocks.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
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    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XI
    </h2>
    <p>
      Mr. Loomis, true to his word, wrote a few days later that he had enquired
      in vain in the work-shop for any news of Ramy; and as she folded this
      letter and laid it between the leaves of her Bible, Ann Eliza felt that
      her last hope was gone. Miss Mellins, of course, had long since suggested
      the mediation of the police, and cited from her favourite literature
      convincing instances of the supernatural ability of the Pinkerton
      detective; but Mr. Hawkins, when called in council, dashed this project by
      remarking that detectives cost something like twenty dollars a day; and a
      vague fear of the law, some half-formed vision of Evelina in the clutch of
      a blue-coated “officer,” kept Ann Eliza from invoking the aid of the
      police.
    </p>
    <p>
      After the arrival of Mr. Loomis's note the weeks followed each other
      uneventfully. Ann Eliza's cough clung to her till late in the spring, the
      reflection in her looking-glass grew more bent and meagre, and her
      forehead sloped back farther toward the twist of hair that was fastened
      above her parting by a comb of black India-rubber.
    </p>
    <p>
      Toward spring a lady who was expecting a baby took up her abode at the
      Mendoza Family Hotel, and through the friendly intervention of Miss
      Mellins the making of some of the baby-clothes was entrusted to Ann Eliza.
      This eased her of anxiety for the immediate future; but she had to rouse
      herself to feel any sense of relief. Her personal welfare was what least
      concerned her. Sometimes she thought of giving up the shop altogether; and
      only the fear that, if she changed her address, Evelina might not be able
      to find her, kept her from carrying out this plan.
    </p>
    <p>
      Since she had lost her last hope of tracing her sister, all the activities
      of her lonely imagination had been concentrated on the possibility of
      Evelina's coming back to her. The discovery of Ramy's secret filled her
      with dreadful fears. In the solitude of the shop and the back room she was
      tortured by vague pictures of Evelina's sufferings. What horrors might not
      be hidden beneath her silence? Ann Eliza's great dread was that Miss
      Mellins should worm out of her what she had learned from Mr. Loomis. She
      was sure Miss Mellins must have abominable things to tell about
      drug-fiends&mdash;things she did not have the strength to hear.
      “Drug-fiend”&mdash;the very word was Satanic; she could hear Miss Mellins
      roll it on her tongue. But Ann Eliza's own imagination, left to itself,
      had begun to people the long hours with evil visions. Sometimes, in the
      night, she thought she heard herself called: the voice was her sister's,
      but faint with a nameless terror. Her most peaceful moments were those in
      which she managed to convince herself that Evelina was dead. She thought
      of her then, mournfully but more calmly, as thrust away under the
      neglected mound of some unknown cemetery, where no headstone marked her
      name, no mourner with flowers for another grave paused in pity to lay a
      blossom on hers. But this vision did not often give Ann Eliza its negative
      relief; and always, beneath its hazy lines, lurked the dark conviction
      that Evelina was alive, in misery and longing for her.
    </p>
    <p>
      So the summer wore on. Ann Eliza was conscious that Mrs. Hawkins and Miss
      Mellins were watching her with affectionate anxiety, but the knowledge
      brought no comfort. She no longer cared what they felt or thought about
      her. Her grief lay far beyond touch of human healing, and after a while
      she became aware that they knew they could not help her. They still came
      in as often as their busy lives permitted, but their visits grew shorter,
      and Mrs. Hawkins always brought Arthur or the baby, so that there should
      be something to talk about, and some one whom she could scold.
    </p>
    <p>
      The autumn came, and the winter. Business had fallen off again, and but
      few purchasers came to the little shop in the basement. In January Ann
      Eliza pawned her mother's cashmere scarf, her mosaic brooch, and the
      rosewood what-not on which the clock had always stood; she would have sold
      the bedstead too, but for the persistent vision of Evelina returning weak
      and weary, and not knowing where to lay her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      The winter passed in its turn, and March reappeared with its galaxies of
      yellow jonquils at the windy street corners, reminding Ann Eliza of the
      spring day when Evelina had come home with a bunch of jonquils in her
      hand. In spite of the flowers which lent such a premature brightness to
      the streets the month was fierce and stormy, and Ann Eliza could get no
      warmth into her bones. Nevertheless, she was insensibly beginning to take
      up the healing routine of life. Little by little she had grown used to
      being alone, she had begun to take a languid interest in the one or two
      new purchasers the season had brought, and though the thought of Evelina
      was as poignant as ever, it was less persistently in the foreground of her
      mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      Late one afternoon she was sitting behind the counter, wrapped in her
      shawl, and wondering how soon she might draw down the blinds and retreat
      into the comparative cosiness of the back room. She was not thinking of
      anything in particular, except perhaps in a hazy way of the lady with the
      puffed sleeves, who after her long eclipse had reappeared the day before
      in sleeves of a new cut, and bought some tape and needles. The lady still
      wore mourning, but she was evidently lightening it, and Ann Eliza saw in
      this the hope of future orders. The lady had left the shop about an hour
      before, walking away with her graceful step toward Fifth Avenue. She had
      wished Ann Eliza good day in her usual affable way, and Ann Eliza thought
      how odd it was that they should have been acquainted so long, and yet that
      she should not know the lady's name. From this consideration her mind
      wandered to the cut of the lady's new sleeves, and she was vexed with
      herself for not having noted it more carefully. She felt Miss Mellins
      might have liked to know about it. Ann Eliza's powers of observation had
      never been as keen as Evelina's, when the latter was not too self-absorbed
      to exert them. As Miss Mellins always said, Evelina could “take patterns
      with her eyes”: she could have cut that new sleeve out of a folded
      newspaper in a trice! Musing on these things, Ann Eliza wished the lady
      would come back and give her another look at the sleeve. It was not
      unlikely that she might pass that way, for she certainly lived in or about
      the Square. Suddenly Ann Eliza remarked a small neat handkerchief on the
      counter: it must have dropped from the lady's purse, and she would
      probably come back to get it. Ann Eliza, pleased at the idea, sat on
      behind the counter and watched the darkening street. She always lit the
      gas as late as possible, keeping the box of matches at her elbow, so that
      if any one came she could apply a quick flame to the gas-jet. At length
      through the deepening dusk she distinguished a slim dark figure coming
      down the steps to the shop. With a little warmth of pleasure about her
      heart she reached up to light the gas. “I do believe I'll ask her name
      this time,” she thought. She raised the flame to its full height, and saw
      her sister standing in the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      There she was at last, the poor pale shade of Evelina, her thin face
      blanched of its faint pink, the stiff ripples gone from her hair, and a
      mantle shabbier than Ann Eliza's drawn about her narrow shoulders. The
      glare of the gas beat full on her as she stood and looked at Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Sister&mdash;oh, Evelina! I knowed you'd come!”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza had caught her close with a long moan of triumph. Vague words
      poured from her as she laid her cheek against Evelina's&mdash;trivial
      inarticulate endearments caught from Mrs. Hawkins's long discourses to her
      baby.
    </p>
    <p>
      For a while Evelina let herself be passively held; then she drew back from
      her sister's clasp and looked about the shop. “I'm dead tired. Ain't there
      any fire?” she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Of course there is!” Ann Eliza, holding her hand fast, drew her into the
      back room. She did not want to ask any questions yet: she simply wanted to
      feel the emptiness of the room brimmed full again by the one presence that
      was warmth and light to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      She knelt down before the grate, scraped some bits of coal and kindling
      from the bottom of the coal-scuttle, and drew one of the rocking-chairs up
      to the weak flame. “There&mdash;that'll blaze up in a minute,” she said.
      She pressed Evelina down on the faded cushions of the rocking-chair, and,
      kneeling beside her, began to rub her hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You're stone-cold, ain't you? Just sit still and warm yourself while I
      run and get the kettle. I've got something you always used to fancy for
      supper.” She laid her hand on Evelina's shoulder. “Don't talk&mdash;oh,
      don't talk yet!” she implored. She wanted to keep that one frail second of
      happiness between herself and what she knew must come.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina, without a word, bent over the fire, stretching her thin hands to
      the blaze and watching Ann Eliza fill the kettle and set the supper table.
      Her gaze had the dreamy fixity of a half-awakened child's.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza, with a smile of triumph, brought a slice of custard pie from
      the cupboard and put it by her sister's plate.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You do like that, don't you? Miss Mellins sent it down to me this
      morning. She had her aunt from Brooklyn to dinner. Ain't it funny it just
      so happened?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I ain't hungry,” said Evelina, rising to approach the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat down in her usual place, looked about her with the same wondering
      stare, and then, as of old, poured herself out the first cup of tea.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Where's the what-not gone to?” she suddenly asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza set down the teapot and rose to get a spoon from the cupboard.
      With her back to the room she said: “The what-not? Why, you see, dearie,
      living here all alone by myself it only made one more thing to dust; so I
      sold it.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina's eyes were still travelling about the familiar room. Though it
      was against all the traditions of the Bunner family to sell any household
      possession, she showed no surprise at her sister's answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      “And the clock? The clock's gone too.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, I gave that away&mdash;I gave it to Mrs. Hawkins. She's kep' awake so
      nights with that last baby.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I wish you'd never bought it,” said Evelina harshly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza's heart grew faint with fear. Without answering, she crossed
      over to her sister's seat and poured her out a second cup of tea. Then
      another thought struck her, and she went back to the cupboard and took out
      the cordial. In Evelina's absence considerable draughts had been drawn
      from it by invalid neighbours; but a glassful of the precious liquid still
      remained.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Here, drink this right off&mdash;it'll warm you up quicker than
      anything,” Ann Eliza said.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina obeyed, and a slight spark of colour came into her cheeks. She
      turned to the custard pie and began to eat with a silent voracity
      distressing to watch. She did not even look to see what was left for Ann
      Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I ain't hungry,” she said at last as she laid down her fork. “I'm only so
      dead tired&mdash;that's the trouble.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Then you'd better get right into bed. Here's my old plaid dressing-gown&mdash;you
      remember it, don't you?” Ann Eliza laughed, recalling Evelina's ironies on
      the subject of the antiquated garment. With trembling fingers she began to
      undo her sister's cloak. The dress beneath it told a tale of poverty that
      Ann Eliza dared not pause to note. She drew it gently off, and as it
      slipped from Evelina's shoulders it revealed a tiny black bag hanging on a
      ribbon about her neck. Evelina lifted her hand as though to screen the bag
      from Ann Eliza; and the elder sister, seeing the gesture, continued her
      task with lowered eyes. She undressed Evelina as quickly as she could, and
      wrapping her in the plaid dressing-gown put her to bed, and spread her own
      shawl and her sister's cloak above the blanket.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Where's the old red comfortable?” Evelina asked, as she sank down on the
      pillow.
    </p>
    <p>
      “The comfortable? Oh, it was so hot and heavy I never used it after you
      went&mdash;so I sold that too. I never could sleep under much clothes.”
     </p>
    <p>
      She became aware that her sister was looking at her more attentively.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I guess you've been in trouble too,” Evelina said.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Me? In trouble? What do you mean, Evelina?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “You've had to pawn the things, I suppose,” Evelina continued in a weary
      unmoved tone. “Well, I've been through worse than that. I've been to hell
      and back.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, Evelina&mdash;don't say it, sister!” Ann Eliza implored, shrinking
      from the unholy word. She knelt down and began to rub her sister's feet
      beneath the bedclothes.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I've been to hell and back&mdash;if I <i>am</i> back,” Evelina repeated. She
      lifted her head from the pillow and began to talk with a sudden feverish
      volubility. “It began right away, less than a month after we were married.
      I've been in hell all that time, Ann Eliza.” She fixed her eyes with
      passionate intentness on Ann Eliza's face. “He took opium. I didn't find
      it out till long afterward&mdash;at first, when he acted so strange, I
      thought he drank. But it was worse, much worse than drinking.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, sister, don't say it&mdash;don't say it yet! It's so sweet just to
      have you here with me again.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I must say it,” Evelina insisted, her flushed face burning with a kind of
      bitter cruelty. “You don't know what life's like&mdash;you don't know
      anything about it&mdash;setting here safe all the while in this peaceful
      place.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, Evelina&mdash;why didn't you write and send for me if it was like
      that?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “That's why I couldn't write. Didn't you guess I was ashamed?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “How could you be? Ashamed to write to Ann Eliza?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina raised herself on her thin elbow, while Ann Eliza, bending over,
      drew a corner of the shawl about her shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Do lay down again. You'll catch your death.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “My death? That don't frighten me! You don't know what I've been through.”
       And sitting upright in the old mahogany bed, with flushed cheeks and
      chattering teeth, and Ann Eliza's trembling arm clasping the shawl about
      her neck, Evelina poured out her story. It was a tale of misery and
      humiliation so remote from the elder sister's innocent experiences that
      much of it was hardly intelligible to her. Evelina's dreadful familiarity
      with it all, her fluency about things which Ann Eliza half-guessed and
      quickly shuddered back from, seemed even more alien and terrible than the
      actual tale she told. It was one thing&mdash;and heaven knew it was bad
      enough!&mdash;to learn that one's sister's husband was a drug-fiend; it
      was another, and much worse thing, to learn from that sister's pallid lips
      what vileness lay behind the word.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina, unconscious of any distress but her own, sat upright, shivering
      in Ann Eliza's hold, while she piled up, detail by detail, her dreary
      narrative.
    </p>
    <p>
      “The minute we got out there, and he found the job wasn't as good as he
      expected, he changed. At first I thought he was sick&mdash;I used to try
      to keep him home and nurse him. Then I saw it was something different. He
      used to go off for hours at a time, and when he came back his eyes kinder
      had a fog over them. Sometimes he didn't har'ly know me, and when he did
      he seemed to hate me. Once he hit me here.” She touched her breast. “Do
      you remember, Ann Eliza, that time he didn't come to see us for a week&mdash;the
      time after we all went to Central Park together&mdash;and you and I
      thought he must be sick?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza nodded.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, that was the trouble&mdash;he'd been at it then. But nothing like
      as bad. After we'd been out there about a month he disappeared for a whole
      week. They took him back at the store, and gave him another chance; but
      the second time they discharged him, and he drifted round for ever so long
      before he could get another job. We spent all our money and had to move to
      a cheaper place. Then he got something to do, but they hardly paid him
      anything, and he didn't stay there long. When he found out about the baby&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      “The baby?” Ann Eliza faltered.
    </p>
    <p>
      “It's dead&mdash;it only lived a day. When he found out about it, he got
      mad, and said he hadn't any money to pay doctors' bills, and I'd better
      write to you to help us. He had an idea you had money hidden away that I
      didn't know about.” She turned to her sister with remorseful eyes. “It was
      him that made me get that hundred dollars out of you.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Hush, hush. I always meant it for you anyhow.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, but I wouldn't have taken it if he hadn't been at me the whole time.
      He used to make me do just what he wanted. Well, when I said I wouldn't
      write to you for more money he said I'd better try and earn some myself.
      That was when he struck me.... Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about
      yet!... I tried to get work at a milliner's, but I was so sick I couldn't
      stay. I was sick all the time. I wisht I'd ha' died, Ann Eliza.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “No, no, Evelina.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, I do. It kept getting worse and worse. We pawned the furniture, and
      they turned us out because we couldn't pay the rent; and so then we went
      to board with Mrs. Hochmuller.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza pressed her closer to dissemble her own tremor. “Mrs.
      Hochmuller?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Didn't you know she was out there? She moved out a month after we did.
      She wasn't bad to me, and I think she tried to keep him straight&mdash;but
      Linda&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Linda&mdash;?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, when I kep' getting worse, and he was always off, for days at a
      time, the doctor had me sent to a hospital.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “A hospital? Sister&mdash;sister!”
     </p>
    <p>
      “It was better than being with him; and the doctors were real kind to me.
      After the baby was born I was very sick and had to stay there a good
      while. And one day when I was laying there Mrs. Hochmuller came in as
      white as a sheet, and told me him and Linda had gone off together and
      taken all her money. That's the last I ever saw of him.” She broke off
      with a laugh and began to cough again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza tried to persuade her to lie down and sleep, but the rest of her
      story had to be told before she could be soothed into consent. After the
      news of Ramy's flight she had had brain fever, and had been sent to
      another hospital where she stayed a long time&mdash;how long she couldn't
      remember. Dates and days meant nothing to her in the shapeless ruin of her
      life. When she left the hospital she found that Mrs. Hochmuller had gone
      too. She was penniless, and had no one to turn to. A lady visitor at the
      hospital was kind, and found her a place where she did housework; but she
      was so weak they couldn't keep her. Then she got a job as waitress in a
      down-town lunch-room, but one day she fainted while she was handing a
      dish, and that evening when they paid her they told her she needn't come
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      “After that I begged in the streets”&mdash;(Ann Eliza's grasp again grew
      tight)&mdash;“and one afternoon last week, when the matinees was coming
      out, I met a man with a pleasant face, something like Mr. Hawkins, and he
      stopped and asked me what the trouble was. I told him if he'd give me five
      dollars I'd have money enough to buy a ticket back to New York, and he
      took a good look at me and said, well, if that was what I wanted he'd go
      straight to the station with me and give me the five dollars there. So he
      did&mdash;and he bought the ticket, and put me in the cars.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina sank back, her face a sallow wedge in the white cleft of the
      pillow. Ann Eliza leaned over her, and for a long time they held each
      other without speaking.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were still clasped in this dumb embrace when there was a step in the
      shop and Ann Eliza, starting up, saw Miss Mellins in the doorway.
    </p>
    <p>
      “My sakes, Miss Bunner! What in the land are you doing? Miss Evelina&mdash;Mrs.
      Ramy&mdash;it ain't you?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Miss Mellins's eyes, bursting from their sockets, sprang from Evelina's
      pallid face to the disordered supper table and the heap of worn clothes on
      the floor; then they turned back to Ann Eliza, who had placed herself on
      the defensive between her sister and the dress-maker.
    </p>
    <p>
      “My sister Evelina has come back&mdash;come back on a visit. She was taken
      sick in the cars on the way home&mdash;I guess she caught cold&mdash;so I
      made her go right to bed as soon as ever she got here.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza was surprised at the strength and steadiness of her voice.
      Fortified by its sound she went on, her eyes on Miss Mellins's baffled
      countenance: “Mr. Ramy has gone west on a trip&mdash;a trip connected with
      his business; and Evelina is going to stay with me till he comes back.”
     </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XII
    </h2>
    <p>
      What measure of belief her explanation of Evelina's return obtained in the
      small circle of her friends Ann Eliza did not pause to enquire. Though she
      could not remember ever having told a lie before, she adhered with rigid
      tenacity to the consequences of her first lapse from truth, and fortified
      her original statement with additional details whenever a questioner
      sought to take her unawares.
    </p>
    <p>
      But other and more serious burdens lay on her startled conscience. For the
      first time in her life she dimly faced the awful problem of the inutility
      of self-sacrifice. Hitherto she had never thought of questioning the
      inherited principles which had guided her life. Self-effacement for the
      good of others had always seemed to her both natural and necessary; but
      then she had taken it for granted that it implied the securing of that
      good. Now she perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure
      their transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her
      familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt she could no longer trust in the
      goodness of God, and there was only a black abyss above the roof of Bunner
      Sisters.
    </p>
    <p>
      But there was little time to brood upon such problems. The care of Evelina
      filled Ann Eliza's days and nights. The hastily summoned doctor had
      pronounced her to be suffering from pneumonia, and under his care the
      first stress of the disease was relieved. But her recovery was only
      partial, and long after the doctor's visits had ceased she continued to
      lie in bed, too weak to move, and seemingly indifferent to everything
      about her.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length one evening, about six weeks after her return, she said to her
      sister: “I don't feel's if I'd ever get up again.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza turned from the kettle she was placing on the stove. She was
      startled by the echo the words woke in her own breast.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Don't you talk like that, Evelina! I guess you're on'y tired out&mdash;and
      disheartened.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, I'm disheartened,” Evelina murmured.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few months earlier Ann Eliza would have met the confession with a word
      of pious admonition; now she accepted it in silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Maybe you'll brighten up when your cough gets better,” she suggested.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Yes&mdash;or my cough'll get better when I brighten up,” Evelina retorted
      with a touch of her old tartness.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Does your cough keep on hurting you jest as much?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I don't see's there's much difference.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, I guess I'll get the doctor to come round again,” Ann Eliza said,
      trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might speak of sending
      for the plumber or the gas-fitter.
    </p>
    <p>
      “It ain't any use sending for the doctor&mdash;and who's going to pay
      him?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I am,” answered the elder sister. “Here's your tea, and a mite of toast.
      Don't that tempt you?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Already, in the watches of the night, Ann Eliza had been tormented by that
      same question&mdash;who was to pay the doctor?&mdash;and a few days before
      she had temporarily silenced it by borrowing twenty dollars of Miss
      Mellins. The transaction had cost her one of the bitterest struggles of
      her life. She had never borrowed a penny of any one before, and the
      possibility of having to do so had always been classed in her mind among
      those shameful extremities to which Providence does not let decent people
      come. But nowadays she no longer believed in the personal supervision of
      Providence; and had she been compelled to steal the money instead of
      borrowing it, she would have felt that her conscience was the only
      tribunal before which she had to answer. Nevertheless, the actual
      humiliation of having to ask for the money was no less bitter; and she
      could hardly hope that Miss Mellins would view the case with the same
      detachment as herself. Miss Mellins was very kind; but she not unnaturally
      felt that her kindness should be rewarded by according her the right to
      ask questions; and bit by bit Ann Eliza saw Evelina's miserable secret
      slipping into the dress-maker's possession.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the doctor came she left him alone with Evelina, busying herself in
      the shop that she might have an opportunity of seeing him alone on his way
      out. To steady herself she began to sort a trayful of buttons, and when
      the doctor appeared she was reciting under her breath: “Twenty-four horn,
      two and a half cards fancy pearl...” She saw at once that his look was
      grave.
    </p>
    <p>
      He sat down on the chair beside the counter, and her mind travelled miles
      before he spoke.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Miss Bunner, the best thing you can do is to let me get a bed for your
      sister at St. Luke's.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “The hospital?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Come now, you're above that sort of prejudice, aren't you?” The doctor
      spoke in the tone of one who coaxes a spoiled child. “I know how devoted
      you are&mdash;but Mrs. Ramy can be much better cared for there than here.
      You really haven't time to look after her and attend to your business as
      well. There'll be no expense, you understand&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza made no answer. “You think my sister's going to be sick a good
      while, then?” she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Well, yes&mdash;possibly.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “You think she's very sick?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Well, yes. She's very sick.”
     </p>
    <p>
      His face had grown still graver; he sat there as though he had never known
      what it was to hurry.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza continued to separate the pearl and horn buttons. Suddenly she
      lifted her eyes and looked at him. “Is she going to die?”
     </p>
    <p>
      The doctor laid a kindly hand on hers. “We never say that, Miss Bunner.
      Human skill works wonders&mdash;and at the hospital Mrs. Ramy would have
      every chance.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “What is it? What's she dying of?”
     </p>
    <p>
      The doctor hesitated, seeking to substitute a popular phrase for the
      scientific terminology which rose to his lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I want to know,” Ann Eliza persisted.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Yes, of course; I understand. Well, your sister has had a hard time
      lately, and there is a complication of causes, resulting in consumption&mdash;rapid
      consumption. At the hospital&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I'll keep her here,” said Ann Eliza quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      After the doctor had gone she went on for some time sorting the buttons;
      then she slipped the tray into its place on a shelf behind the counter and
      went into the back room. She found Evelina propped upright against the
      pillows, a flush of agitation on her cheeks. Ann Eliza pulled up the shawl
      which had slipped from her sister's shoulders.
    </p>
    <p>
      “How long you've been! What's he been saying?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, he went long ago&mdash;he on'y stopped to give me a prescription. I
      was sorting out that tray of buttons. Miss Mellins's girl got them all
      mixed up.”
     </p>
    <p>
      She felt Evelina's eyes upon her.
    </p>
    <p>
      “He must have said something: what was it?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Why, he said you'd have to be careful&mdash;and stay in bed&mdash;and
      take this new medicine he's given you.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Did he say I was going to get well?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Why, Evelina!”
     </p>
    <p>
      “What's the use, Ann Eliza? You can't deceive me. I've just been up to
      look at myself in the glass; and I saw plenty of 'em in the hospital that
      looked like me. They didn't get well, and I ain't going to.” Her head
      dropped back. “It don't much matter&mdash;I'm about tired. On'y there's
      one thing&mdash;Ann Eliza&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      The elder sister drew near to the bed.
    </p>
    <p>
      “There's one thing I ain't told you. I didn't want to tell you yet because
      I was afraid you might be sorry&mdash;but if he says I'm going to die I've
      got to say it.” She stopped to cough, and to Ann Eliza it now seemed as
      though every cough struck a minute from the hours remaining to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Don't talk now&mdash;you're tired.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I'll be tireder to-morrow, I guess. And I want you should know. Sit down
      close to me&mdash;there.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza sat down in silence, stroking her shrunken hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I'm a Roman Catholic, Ann Eliza.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Evelina&mdash;oh, Evelina Bunner! A Roman Catholic&mdash;<i>you</i>? Oh,
      Evelina, did <i>he</i> make you?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Evelina shook her head. “I guess he didn't have no religion; he never
      spoke of it. But you see Mrs. Hochmuller was a Catholic, and so when I was
      sick she got the doctor to send me to a Roman Catholic hospital, and the
      sisters was so good to me there&mdash;and the priest used to come and talk
      to me; and the things he said kep' me from going crazy. He seemed to make
      everything easier.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Oh, sister, how could you?” Ann Eliza wailed. She knew little of the
      Catholic religion except that “Papists” believed in it&mdash;in itself a
      sufficient indictment. Her spiritual rebellion had not freed her from the
      formal part of her religious belief, and apostasy had always seemed to her
      one of the sins from which the pure in mind avert their thoughts.
    </p>
    <p>
      “And then when the baby was born,” Evelina continued, “he christened it
      right away, so it could go to heaven; and after that, you see, I had to be
      a Catholic.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I don't see&mdash;”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Don't I have to be where the baby is? I couldn't ever ha' gone there if I
      hadn't been made a Catholic. Don't you understand that?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza sat speechless, drawing her hand away. Once more she found
      herself shut out of Evelina's heart, an exile from her closest affections.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I've got to go where the baby is,” Evelina feverishly insisted.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say; she could only feel that Evelina
      was dying, and dying as a stranger in her arms. Ramy and the day-old baby
      had parted her forever from her sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina began again. “If I get worse I want you to send for a priest. Miss
      Mellins'll know where to send&mdash;she's got an aunt that's a Catholic.
      Promise me faithful you will.”
     </p>
    <p>
      “I promise,” said Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      After that they spoke no more of the matter; but Ann Eliza now understood
      that the little black bag about her sister's neck, which she had
      innocently taken for a memento of Ramy, was some kind of sacrilegious
      amulet, and her fingers shrank from its contact when she bathed and
      dressed Evelina. It seemed to her the diabolical instrument of their
      estrangement.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      XIII
    </h2>
    <p>
      Spring had really come at last. There were leaves on the ailanthus-tree
      that Evelina could see from her bed, gentle clouds floated over it in the
      blue, and now and then the cry of a flower-seller sounded from the street.
    </p>
    <p>
      One day there was a shy knock on the back-room door, and Johnny Hawkins
      came in with two yellow jonquils in his fist. He was getting bigger and
      squarer, and his round freckled face was growing into a smaller copy of
      his father's. He walked up to Evelina and held out the flowers.
    </p>
    <p>
      “They blew off the cart and the fellow said I could keep 'em. But you can
      have 'em,” he announced.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza rose from her seat at the sewing-machine and tried to take the
      flowers from him.
    </p>
    <p>
      “They ain't for you; they're for her,” he sturdily objected; and Evelina
      held out her hand for the jonquils.
    </p>
    <p>
      After Johnny had gone she lay and looked at them without speaking. Ann
      Eliza, who had gone back to the machine, bent her head over the seam she
      was stitching; the click, click, click of the machine sounded in her ear
      like the tick of Ramy's clock, and it seemed to her that life had gone
      backward, and that Evelina, radiant and foolish, had just come into the
      room with the yellow flowers in her hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      When at last she ventured to look up, she saw that her sister's head had
      drooped against the pillow, and that she was sleeping quietly. Her relaxed
      hand still held the jonquils, but it was evident that they had awakened no
      memories; she had dozed off almost as soon as Johnny had given them to
      her. The discovery gave Ann Eliza a startled sense of the ruins that must
      be piled upon her past. “I don't believe I could have forgotten that day,
      though,” she said to herself. But she was glad that Evelina had forgotten.
    </p>
    <p>
      Evelina's disease moved on along the usual course, now lifting her on a
      brief wave of elation, now sinking her to new depths of weakness. There
      was little to be done, and the doctor came only at lengthening intervals.
      On his way out he always repeated his first friendly suggestion about
      sending Evelina to the hospital; and Ann Eliza always answered: “I guess
      we can manage.”
     </p>
    <p>
      The hours passed for her with the fierce rapidity that great joy or
      anguish lends them. She went through the days with a sternly smiling
      precision, but she hardly knew what was happening, and when night-fall
      released her from the shop, and she could carry her work to Evelina's
      bedside, the same sense of unreality accompanied her, and she still seemed
      to be accomplishing a task whose object had escaped her memory.
    </p>
    <p>
      Once, when Evelina felt better, she expressed a desire to make some
      artificial flowers, and Ann Eliza, deluded by this awakening interest, got
      out the faded bundles of stems and petals and the little tools and spools
      of wire. But after a few minutes the work dropped from Evelina's hands and
      she said: “I'll wait until to-morrow.”
     </p>
    <p>
      She never again spoke of the flower-making, but one day, after watching
      Ann Eliza's laboured attempt to trim a spring hat for Mrs. Hawkins, she
      demanded impatiently that the hat should be brought to her, and in a trice
      had galvanized the lifeless bow and given the brim the twist it needed.
    </p>
    <p>
      These were rare gleams; and more frequent were the days of speechless
      lassitude, when she lay for hours silently staring at the window, shaken
      only by the hard incessant cough that sounded to Ann Eliza like the
      hammering of nails into a coffin.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length one morning Ann Eliza, starting up from the mattress at the foot
      of the bed, hastily called Miss Mellins down, and ran through the smoky
      dawn for the doctor. He came back with her and did what he could to give
      Evelina momentary relief; then he went away, promising to look in again
      before night. Miss Mellins, her head still covered with curl-papers,
      disappeared in his wake, and when the sisters were alone Evelina beckoned
      to Ann Eliza.
    </p>
    <p>
      “You promised,” she whispered, grasping her sister's arm; and Ann Eliza
      understood. She had not yet dared to tell Miss Mellins of Evelina's change
      of faith; it had seemed even more difficult than borrowing the money; but
      now it had to be done. She ran upstairs after the dress-maker and detained
      her on the landing.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Miss Mellins, can you tell me where to send for a priest&mdash;a Roman
      Catholic priest?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “A priest, Miss Bunner?”
     </p>
    <p>
      “Yes. My sister became a Roman Catholic while she was away. They were kind
      to her in her sickness&mdash;and now she wants a priest.” Ann Eliza faced
      Miss Mellins with unflinching eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      “My aunt Dugan'll know. I'll run right round to her the minute I get my
      papers off,” the dress-maker promised; and Ann Eliza thanked her.
    </p>
    <p>
      An hour or two later the priest appeared. Ann Eliza, who was watching, saw
      him coming down the steps to the shop-door and went to meet him. His
      expression was kind, but she shrank from his peculiar dress, and from his
      pale face with its bluish chin and enigmatic smile. Ann Eliza remained in
      the shop. Miss Mellins's girl had mixed the buttons again and she set
      herself to sort them. The priest stayed a long time with Evelina. When he
      again carried his enigmatic smile past the counter, and Ann Eliza rejoined
      her sister, Evelina was smiling with something of the same mystery; but
      she did not tell her secret.
    </p>
    <p>
      After that it seemed to Ann Eliza that the shop and the back room no
      longer belonged to her. It was as though she were there on sufferance,
      indulgently tolerated by the unseen power which hovered over Evelina even
      in the absence of its minister. The priest came almost daily; and at last
      a day arrived when he was called to administer some rite of which Ann
      Eliza but dimly grasped the sacramental meaning. All she knew was that it
      meant that Evelina was going, and going, under this alien guidance, even
      farther from her than to the dark places of death.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the priest came, with something covered in his hands, she crept into
      the shop, closing the door of the back room to leave him alone with
      Evelina.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a warm afternoon in May, and the crooked ailanthus-tree rooted in a
      fissure of the opposite pavement was a fountain of tender green. Women in
      light dresses passed with the languid step of spring; and presently there
      came a man with a hand-cart full of pansy and geranium plants who stopped
      outside the window, signalling to Ann Eliza to buy.
    </p>
    <p>
      An hour went by before the door of the back room opened and the priest
      reappeared with that mysterious covered something in his hands. Ann Eliza
      had risen, drawing back as he passed. He had doubtless divined her
      antipathy, for he had hitherto only bowed in going in and out; but to day
      he paused and looked at her compassionately.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I have left your sister in a very beautiful state of mind,” he said in a
      low voice like a woman's. “She is full of spiritual consolation.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza was silent, and he bowed and went out. She hastened back to
      Evelina's bed, and knelt down beside it. Evelina's eyes were very large
      and bright; she turned them on Ann Eliza with a look of inner
      illumination.
    </p>
    <p>
      “I shall see the baby,” she said; then her eyelids fell and she dozed.
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctor came again at nightfall, administering some last palliatives;
      and after he had gone Ann Eliza, refusing to have her vigil shared by Miss
      Mellins or Mrs. Hawkins, sat down to keep watch alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a very quiet night. Evelina never spoke or opened her eyes, but in
      the still hour before dawn Ann Eliza saw that the restless hand outside
      the bed-clothes had stopped its twitching. She stooped over and felt no
      breath on her sister's lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      The funeral took place three days later. Evelina was buried in Calvary
      Cemetery, the priest assuming the whole care of the necessary
      arrangements, while Ann Eliza, a passive spectator, beheld with stony
      indifference this last negation of her past.
    </p>
    <p>
      A week afterward she stood in her bonnet and mantle in the doorway of the
      little shop. Its whole aspect had changed. Counter and shelves were bare,
      the window was stripped of its familiar miscellany of artificial flowers,
      note-paper, wire hat-frames, and limp garments from the dyer's; and
      against the glass pane of the doorway hung a sign: “This store to let.”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza turned her eyes from the sign as she went out and locked the
      door behind her. Evelina's funeral had been very expensive, and Ann Eliza,
      having sold her stock-in-trade and the few articles of furniture that
      remained to her, was leaving the shop for the last time. She had not been
      able to buy any mourning, but Miss Mellins had sewed some crape on her old
      black mantle and bonnet, and having no gloves she slipped her bare hands
      under the folds of the mantle.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a beautiful morning, and the air was full of a warm sunshine that
      had coaxed open nearly every window in the street, and summoned to the
      window-sills the sickly plants nurtured indoors in winter. Ann Eliza's way
      lay westward, toward Broadway; but at the corner she paused and looked
      back down the familiar length of the street. Her eyes rested a moment on
      the blotched “Bunner Sisters” above the empty window of the shop; then
      they travelled on to the overflowing foliage of the Square, above which
      was the church tower with the dial that had marked the hours for the
      sisters before Ann Eliza had bought the nickel clock. She looked at it all
      as though it had been the scene of some unknown life, of which the vague
      report had reached her: she felt for herself the only remote pity that
      busy people accord to the misfortunes which come to them by hearsay.
    </p>
    <p>
      She walked to Broadway and down to the office of the house-agent to whom
      she had entrusted the sub-letting of the shop. She left the key with one
      of his clerks, who took it from her as if it had been any one of a
      thousand others, and remarked that the weather looked as if spring was
      really coming; then she turned and began to move up the great
      thoroughfare, which was just beginning to wake to its multitudinous
      activities.
    </p>
    <p>
      She walked less rapidly now, studying each shop window as she passed, but
      not with the desultory eye of enjoyment: the watchful fixity of her gaze
      overlooked everything but the object of its quest. At length she stopped
      before a small window wedged between two mammoth buildings, and
      displaying, behind its shining plate-glass festooned with muslin, a varied
      assortment of sofa-cushions, tea-cloths, pen-wipers, painted calendars and
      other specimens of feminine industry. In a corner of the window she had
      read, on a slip of paper pasted against the pane: “Wanted, a Saleslady,”
       and after studying the display of fancy articles beneath it, she gave her
      mantle a twitch, straightened her shoulders and went in.
    </p>
    <p>
      Behind a counter crowded with pin-cushions, watch-holders and other
      needlework trifles, a plump young woman with smooth hair sat sewing bows
      of ribbon on a scrap basket. The little shop was about the size of the one
      on which Ann Eliza had just closed the door; and it looked as fresh and
      gay and thriving as she and Evelina had once dreamed of making Bunner
      Sisters. The friendly air of the place made her pluck up courage to speak.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Saleslady? Yes, we do want one. Have you any one to recommend?” the young
      woman asked, not unkindly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza hesitated, disconcerted by the unexpected question; and the
      other, cocking her head on one side to study the effect of the bow she had
      just sewed on the basket, continued: “We can't afford more than thirty
      dollars a month, but the work is light. She would be expected to do a
      little fancy sewing between times. We want a bright girl: stylish, and
      pleasant manners. You know what I mean. Not over thirty, anyhow; and
      nice-looking. Will you write down the name?”
     </p>
    <p>
      Ann Eliza looked at her confusedly. She opened her lips to explain, and
      then, without speaking, turned toward the crisply-curtained door.
    </p>
    <p>
      “Ain't you going to leave the <i>ad</i>-dress?” the young woman called out after
      her. Ann Eliza went out into the thronged street. The great city, under
      the fair spring sky, seemed to throb with the stir of innumerable
      beginnings. She walked on, looking for another shop window with a sign in
      it.
    </p>
    <p>
      THE END. <br /><br />
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">





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