 CHAPTER I In the days when New York's traffic moved at the pace of the drooping horse-car, when society applauded Christine Nielsen 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 favorably known to the feminine population of the quarter bordering on Stuyvesant Square. 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 signs surmounting it, merely butter-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 butter-sisters. The house of which butter-sisters had annexed the basement was a private dwelling with a brick front, green shutters on weak hinges, and a dressmaker sign in the window above the shop. On each side of its modest three-stories stood higher buildings with these 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 naughty wisteria 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. 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 signboards 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 fishered pavement formed a mosaic of colored handbills, 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. The sole refuge offered from the contemplation of this depressing waste was the side of the Bunner's sister's window. Its panes were always well washed, and though their display of artificial flowers, bands of scalloped flannel, wire hat frames, and jars of homemade preserves had the undefinable grayish tinge of objects long preserved in the showcase of a museum, the window revealed a background of orderly counters and whitewashed walls in pleasant contrast to the adjoining dinginess. The Bunner's 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. Now and then, however, among their grayer hours there came one not bright enough to be called sunny, but rather of the silverly twilight hue which sometimes ends a day of storm. It was such an hour that Annalisa, the elder of the firm, was soberly enjoying as she sat one January evening in the back room which served as bedroom, kitchen, and parlor 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 dyers, should come back. In the back room a kettle bubbled on the stove, and Annalisa had laid a cloth over one end of the center table, and placed near the green shaded sewing lamp two teacups, 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 nightgown 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 desk. Annalisa, her small and habitually anxious face, smoothed to an unusual serenity, and the streaks of her 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 honor 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 patina 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. Seen thus in her sacramental black silk, a wisp of lace turned over the collar and fastened by mosaic brooch, and her face smoothed into harmony with her apparel, and 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, before she had the same worn and glossy aspect as her dress, but a fanged tinge of pink still lingered on her cheekbones like the reflection of sunset which sometimes colors the west long after the day is over. 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. The younger Bunner's 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. Why Analyza, she exclaimed, in a thin voice pitched to chronic fretfulness, what in the world you got your best silk on for? Analyza had risen with a blush that made her steel-browed spectacles in Congress. Why, Evelina, why shouldn't I, I'd should like to know. Ain't it your birthday, dear? She put out her arms with awkwardness of habitually repressed emotion. Evelina, without seeming to notice the gesture, threw back the jacket from her narrow shoulders. Opsha! she said, lust-peavishly. I'd guess we'd better give up birthdays, much as we can do to keep Christmas nowadays. You hadn't ought to say that, Evelina. We ain't so badly off as all that. I guess you're cold and tired. Sit down while I take the kettle off. It's right on the boil. 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. Why, Analyza? Evelina stood transfixed by the side of the parcel beside her plate. Analyza, tremulously engaged in filling the teapot, lifted a look of hypocritical surprise. Sakes, Evelina, what's the matter? 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. Oh, Analyza, how could you? She set the clock down, and the sister's exchanged agitated glances across the table. Well, the elder retorted, ain't it your birthday? Yes, but, well, and ain't you had to run around 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? Yes, but 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? Analyza, 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. Here how loud she ticks! I was afraid you'd hear as soon as you come in. No, I wasn't thinking, murmured Evelina. Well, ain't you glad now? Analyza gently reproached her. The rebuke had no acerbity, for she knew that Evelina's seeming indifference was alive with unexpressed scruples. I'm real glad, sister, but you had an otter. We could have gone off well enough without. Evelina, butter, just you sit down to your tea. I guess I know what I'd otter and what I hadn't otter just as well as you do. I'm old enough. You're real good, Analyza, but I know you've given up something you needed to get me this clock. 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? 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. 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. No, it didn't either, Analyza 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. The baby wastes? Yes. There, I knew it. You swore to me you'd buy a new pair of shoes with that money. Well, and suppose I didn't want them. What then? I've patched up the old ones as good as new, and I do declare Evelina Bonner, if you ask me another question, you'll go and spoil all my pleasure. Very well, I won't, said the younger sister. They continued to eat without further words. Evelina yielded to her sisters-in-treaty 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. Where'd you get it, Analyza? Asked Evelina, fascinated. Where do you suppose? Why right round here, over across 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 storekeeper 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 him much, and he said, well, he knew what hard times was, too. His name's Ramey, Hermann Ramey. I saw it written up over the store. And he told me he used to work at Tiffany's, oh, for years in the clock department, and three years ago he took sick with some kind of 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 like an educated man, but he looks sick. Evelina was listening with absorbed attention. In the narrow lives of the two sisters such an episode was not to be underrated. What you say his name was? She asked as Annalisa paused. Hermann Ramey. How old is he? Well, I couldn't exactly tell you he looked so sick, but I don't believe he's much over forty. By this time the plates had been cleared, and the teapot emptied, and the two sisters rose from the table. Annalisa, tying an apron over her black silk, carefully removed all traces of the meal, then, after washing the cups and the 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 around the room in search of an abiding place for the clock. A rosewood, what not, with ornamental fretwork, hung on the wall beside the devout young lady in Disabille, 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 further consideration, being relegated to a small table covered with blue and white beadwork, which held a Bible and a prayer book, and an illustrated copy of long fellow's poems given as a school prize to their father. 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 a dispiriting click of the instrument under her fingers. End of Chapter 1. CHAPTER 2 OF BUNNER'S SISTERS The purchase of Evelina's clock had been a more important event in the life of Anna Liza 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 dyers, 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, so that, had it not been for the excuse of having to see Mrs. Hawkins' teething baby, Anna Liza would hardly have known what motive to allege for deserting her usual seat behind the counter. 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 and 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 colored experience, from which, for weeks afterwards, she would detach some fragmentary recollection in the course of her long dialogues with her sister. But when, to the unwanted excitement of going out, was added the intenser interest of looking for a present for Evelina, Analyze's agitation, sharpened by concealment, actually prayed upon her rest, and it was not till the present had been given, and she had unbosomed herself of the experiences connected with his 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. Ramey's small shop, not unlike her own in its contrafied obscurity, though the layer of dust which covered its counters and shelves made the comparison only superficially acceptable. Still she did not judge the state of the shop severely, for Mr. Ramey 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 been 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 Avelina, 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 reflections, she lifted a furtive glance to the clock, whose loud staccato tick was becoming a part of her inmost being. The seeds sown by these long hours of meditation germinated at last in the secret wish to go to market some morning in Avelina's stead. As this purpose rose to the surface of Analyze'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? 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? It was Avelina 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 stake on Sunday, the expedition could not be postponed. And it seemed natural that Analyze, as she tied an old stocking around Avelina's throat, should announce her intention of stepping round to the butchers. Oh, Analyze, they'll cheat you so, her sister wailed. Analyze 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. The morning was damp and cold, with the sky full of sulky clouds that would not make room for the sun, but as yet dropped only an occasional snowflake. In the early light the street looked its meanest and most neglected, but to Analyze, never greatly troubled by any untidiness for which she was not responsible, it seemed to wear a singularly friendly aspect. A few minutes walk broader to the market where Avelina made her purchases and where, if he had any sense of topographical fitness, Mr. Raimi must also deal. Analyze, 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. As she approached him across the tessellation of fish scales, blood, and sawdust, he laid aside his cleaver and not unsympathetically asked, Sister Sick? Oh, not very, just a cold, she answered, as guiltily as if Avelina's illness had been feign. We want a steak as usual, please, and my sister said you was to be sure to give me just as good a cut as if it was her, she added with childlike candor. 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. In another moment Analyze reflected, the steak would be cut and wrapped up, and no choice left her but to turn her disappointed steps towards 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. Wait on her first, please, Analyze whispered. I ain't in any hurry. The butcher advanced to his new customer, and Analyze, 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 blousy 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 storyteller, 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. Ramey was not among those who entered the shop, and at last Analyze, ashamed of staying longer, reluctantly claimed her stake and walked home through the thickening snow. Even to her simple judgment the vanity of her hopes was plain, and in the clear light that disappointment turns upon her actions, she wondered how she could have been foolish enough to suppose that, even if Mr. Ramey did go to that particular market, he would hit on the same day an hour as herself. There followed a colorless week unmarked by further 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, a resident of the square whose name they had never learned because she always carried her own parcel's home, 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, it was her first apparition that year, failed to arouse Annalise'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 Annalise 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. Prior to opportunity had played her false, and for all her superior aspirations and carefully crimped hair she had remained as obscure and unsought as Annalise. 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 Annalise had never discovered, but his attentions had clad her sister in a halo of exquisite possibilities. Annalise 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. It was at this stage of Annalise's transformation that Evelina, looking up one evening from her work, said suddenly, My, she's stopped. Annalise, 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. Are you sure you wound her yesterday, Evelina? Just as sure as I live, she must be broke. I'll go and see. Evelina laid down the hat she was trimming and took the clock from its shelf. There, I knew it, she's wound just as tight. What do you suppose has happened to her, Annalise? I don't know, I'm sure, said the elder sister, wiping her spectacles before proceeding to a close examination of the clock. 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. Seems like something dead. Don't it, Annalise? How still the room is. Yes, ain't it? 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 around to Mr. Raimi's tomorrow and see if he can fix her. Annalise's face burned. 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 heartthrob stretched the seams of her flat alpaca bosom and a pulse slept to life in each of her temples. That night, long after Evelina slept, Annalise lay awake in the unfamiliar silence, more acutely conscious of the nearness of the crippled clock than when it had voluably told out the minutes. The next morning she woke from a troubled dream of having carried it to Mr. Raimi's and found that he and his shop had vanished and all through the day's occupations the memory of this dream oppressed her. It had been agreed that Annalise 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 Mellon's has been took again!' Miss Mellon's was the dressmaker upstairs and the weak-eyed child one of her youthful apprentices. Annalise started from her seat. I'll come at once. Quick, Evelina, the cordial. 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, Annalise was hurrying upstairs behind the weak-eyed child. Miss Mellon's turn was sufficiently serious to detain Annalise 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. Annalise was still agitated by her efforts to restore the dressmaker, but in spite of her preoccupation she was struck, as soon as she entered, by the loud tick of the clock which stood on the shelf where she had left it. "'Why, she's going!' she gasped, before Evelina could question her about Miss Mellon's. Did she start up again by herself? "'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. Rameys. It turned out there wasn't anything to matter with her. Nothing only a speck of dust in the works, 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 Mellon's quick!' For a moment Annalise had 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 clockmaker again. "'I suppose 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, Annalise murmur 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 dressmaker's turn. 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 Mellon's, but when the two sisters had seated themselves at their evening meal Annalise at last found a chance to say, "'So she only had a speck of dust in her.'" Evelina understood at once that the reference was not to Miss Mellon's. "'Yes, at least he thinks so,' she answered, helping herself as a matter of course to the first cup of tea. "'Only to think,' murmured Annalise. "'But he isn't sure,' Evelina continued, absently pushing the teapot toward her sister. It may be something wrong with the—' I forget what he called it. Anyhow he said he'd call round and see, day after tomorrow, after supper. "'Who,' said,' gasped Annalise. "'Why, Mr. Ramey, of course. I think he's real nice, Annalise, and I don't believe he's forty, but he does look sick. I guess he's pretty lonesome all by himself in that store. He as much as told me so. And somehow, Evelina paused and bridled, I kind of thought that maybe his saying he'd call round about the clock was only just an excuse. He said it just as I was going out of the store. What you think, Annalise? Oh, I don't hardly know. To save herself, Annalise could produce nothing warmer. "'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 Ramey wouldn't be sorry to pass an evening here instead of spending it all alone in that pokey little place of his.' Her self-consciousness irritated Annalise. "'I guess he's got plenty of friends of his own,' she said, almost harshly. "'No, he ain't either. He's got hardly any. Did he tell you that, too?' Even to her own ears there was a faint sneer in the interrogation. "'Yes, he did,' said Evelina, dropping her lids with a smile. He seemed to be just crazy to talk to somebody. Somebody agreeable, I mean. I think the man's unhappy, Annalise. So do I,' broke from the older sister. He seemed 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 Tiffany's and one of the headmen in their clock department? He told you all that? "'Why, yes. I think he'd have told me everything ever happened to him if I'd had the time to stay and listen. I tell you, he's dead lonely, Annalise.' "'Yes,' said Annalise. End of Chapter 2. CHAPTER III. OF BUNNER'S SISTERS. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Two days afterward Annalise 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 Annalise in the removal of the dishes. "'I hate to see food musing about,' she grumbled. Ain't it hateful having to do everything in one room?' "'Oh, Evelina, I've always thought we was so comfortable,' Annalise protested. "'Well, so we are, comfortable enough, but I don't suppose there's any harm in my saying I wished we had a parlor. Is there?' "'Anyway, we might manage to buy a screen to hide the bed.' Annalise culled. There was something vaguely embarrassing in Evelina's suggestion. "'I always think, if we ask for more, what we have may be taken from us,' she ventured. "'Well, whoever took it wouldn't get much,' Evelina retorted with a laugh as she swept up the tablecloth. A few moments later the back room was in its usual flawless order, and the two sisters had seated themselves near the lamp. Annalise had taken up her sowing, 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 tonight 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. Annalise had made no remark on this unusual proceeding. Perhaps she guessed why, for that evening her sister had chosen a graceful task. 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.' Annalise was glad to sit still. The baby's petticoat that she was stitching shook in her fingers. "'Sister, here's Mr. Ramey 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. Annalise a letter work-fall as she stood up. "'You're very welcome. I'm sure, Mr. Ramey. It's real kind of you to call.' "'Not at all, ma'am.' A tendency to illustrate Grimm's law in the interchange of his consonants betrayed the clock-maker'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 let any clock go out of my store without being sure it gives satisfaction,' he added. "'Oh, but we were satisfied,' Annalise assured him. "'But I wasn't, you see, ma'am,' said Mr. Ramey, looking slowly about the room. "'Nor I won't beat, not till I see that clock's going all right.' "'May I assist you off with your coat, Mr. Ramey?' Evelina interposed. She could never trust Annalise to remember these opening ceremonies. "'Thank you, ma'am,' he replied, and taking his threadbare overcoat 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. Annalise'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 went beautiful ever since you fixed her.' "'That's good,' said Mr. Ramey.' 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 Annalise 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 fingertips rimmed with grime, but his touch was as light as a woman's. "'Well, ladies, that clock's all right,' he pronounced. "'I'm sure we're very much obliged to you,' said Evelina, throwing a glance at her sister. "'Oh!' Annalise 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 fine wreaths. "'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. "'It looks fine,' said Mr. Ramey bowing, and Annalise a-filled the glasses. In her own and Evelina's she poured only a few drops, but she filled their guests to the brim. "'My sister and I seldom take wine,' she explained. With another bow which included both his hostesses, Mr. Ramey drank off the cherry brandy and pronounced it excellent. Evelina, meanwhile, with an assumption of industry intended to put their guests at ease, had taken up her instruments and was twisting a rose-pedal into shape. "'You make artificial flowers, I see, ma'am,' said Mr. Ramey, with interest. "'It's very pretty work. I had a lady friend in Charmony that used to make flowers. He put out a square fingertip to touch the petal.' Evelina blushed a little. "'You left Germany long ago, I suppose?' "'Dear me, yes, a good while ago. I was only nineteen when I come to the States. After this the conversation dragged on intermittently till Mr. Ramey, 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 Analyza. "'Oh, we live very plainly,' said Evelina, with an affectation of grandeur deeply impressive to her sister. We have very simple tastes. "'You look real comfortable anyhow,' said Mr. Ramey. His bulging eyes seemed to muster the details of the scene with a gentle envy. "'I wished I had its go to store. But I guess Noble seems like home when you're always alone in it.' For some minutes longer the conversation moved on at this desultory pace, and then Mr. Ramey, who had been obviously nerving himself for the difficult act of departure, took his leave with an abruptness which would have startled any one used to the subtler gradations of intercourse. But to Analyza 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. Ramey if he had tried to put any fluency into his adieu. 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.' End of Chapter 3 CHAPTER IV Intolerably monotonous seemed now to the Bunner sisters the treadmill routine of the shop, colorless and long their evenings about the lamp, aimless their habitual interchange of words to the weary accompaniment of the sewing and pinking machines. It was perhaps with the idea of relieving the tension of their mood that Evelina, the following Sunday, suggested inviting Miss Mellons 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 Mellons, still flushed with the importance of her turn, seemed the most interesting guest they could invite. As the three women seated themselves at the supper table, embellished by the unwanted addition of pound cake and sweet pickles, the dressmaker's sharp, swarthy person stood out vividly between the neutral-tinted sisters. Miss Mellons 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 Mellons 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 spiritual assayance, 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 nightgown, 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 manhole before the eyes of his distracted family. A skeptical observer might have explained Miss Mellons'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 on a circle where such insinuations were not likely to be heard, and where the tidal role in blood-curdling drama had long been her recognized right. Yes, she was now saying, her emphatic eyes on Analyza, you may not believe it, Miss Bunner, and I don't know 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, and what you suppose she told her, why she told her these very words, says she, your next child will be a girl with jet-black curls, and she'll suffer from spasms. Mercy, murmured Analyza, a ripple of sympathy running down her spine. Did you ever have spasms before, Miss Mellon's, Evelina asked. Yes, ma'am, the dressmaker declared, and where do you suppose I had him? Why, at my cousin Emma McIntyre's wedding, her that married the Potha carryover in Jersey City, though her mother appeared to her in a dream, and told her she'd brew the day she'd done it. But as Emma said, she got more advice than she wanted from the living, and if she was to listen to specters, too, she'd never be sure what she'd ought to do and what she oughtn't. But I will say her husband took to drink, and she never was the same woman after her first baby. Well, they had an elegant church wedding, and what do you suppose I saw as I was walking up the aisle with the wedding procession? Well, Annalisa whispered, forgetting to thread her needle. Why a coffin, to be sure, right on the top step of the chancel. Emma's folks is Piscopalians, and she would have a church wedding, though his mother raised a terrible rumpus over it. Well, there it's set, right in front of where the minister stood that was going to marry him. A coffin covered with a black velvet paw with a gold fringe, and a gate's ajar, and white camellia's a top of it. Goodness! said Evelina, starting, there's a knock! Who can it be? shut her down, Annalisa, still under the spell of Miss Mellon's hallucination. 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. Ramey. Annalisa's heart rocked like a boat in a heavy sea, and the dressmaker's eyes, distended with curiosity, sprang eagerly from face to face. I just thought I'd call in again, said Mr. Ramey, evidently somewhat disconcerted by the presence of Miss Mellon's, just to see how the clock's behaving, he added with his hollow cheeked smile. Oh, she's behaving beautiful, said Annalisa, but we're real glad to see you all the same. Miss Mellon's let me make you acquainted with Mr. Ramey. The dressmaker tossed back her head and dropped her lids in condescending recognition of the stranger's presence, and Mr. Ramey 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 Mellon see that they received an occasional evening visit, and Miss Mellon's was clearly enchanted at the opportunity of pouring her latest tale into a new ear. As for Mr. Ramey, 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 the supper still lingered on the table, blushed with pleasure at his good, humored offer to help her glir away. The table cleared, Annalisa suggested a game of cards, and it was after eleven o'clock when Mr. Ramey rose to take leave. His adieu 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 Mellon's playfully turned to Annalisa. 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. Only to think! Annalisa, roused from a state of dreamy beatitude, turned her timid eyes on the dressmaker. Oh, you're mistaken, Miss Mellon's. We don't hardly know Mr. Ramey. Miss Mellon's 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 gourd satin with ruchings. Annalisa 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 Annalisa that the coquettish tilt of her head regrettably emphasized the weakness of her receding chin. It was the first time that Annalisa had ever seen a flaw in her sister's beauty, and her involuntary criticism startled her like a secret disloyalty. 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 to transient freshness to her days. She wondered now how she could ever have supposed that Mr. Ramey's visits had another cause than the one Miss Mellon 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 Annalisa'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. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of BUNNER SISTERS During the months that followed Mr. Ramey 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. Annalisa 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 Annalisa's. Mr. Ramey, 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. Ramey when he comes, and of accepting his verdict whatever it might be with a fatalistic readiness that relieved them of all responsibility. When Mr. Ramey 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. Hochmühler, 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 analyze his brow by saying suddenly, without the mention of any name, I wonder what she's like. One day toward spring Mr. Ramey, 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. After their first breathless, oh, of pleasure, there was a silence of mutual consultation which analyzed at last broke by saying, You better go with Mr. Ramey, Evelina, I guess we don't both want to leave the store at night. 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. Analyza brought out her mosaic brooch, a cashmere scarf of their mothers was taken from its linen sermons, and thus adorned Evelina blushingly departed with Mr. Ramey while the elder sister sat down in her place at the pinking machine. It seemed to Analyza 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. It must have gone wrong again, she reflected as she rose to let her sister in. The evening had been brilliantly interesting, and several striking stereopticon views of Berlin had afforded Mr. Ramey the opportunity of enlarging on the marvels of his native city. He said he'd love to show it all to me, Evelina declared, as Analyza conned her glowing face. Did you ever hear anything so silly? I didn't know which way to look. Analyza received this confidence with a sympathetic murmur. My bonnet is becoming, isn't it? Evelina went on irrelevantly, smiling at her reflection in the cracked glass above the chest of drawers. Your chest lovely, said Analyza. 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. I was just that foolish, she answered Analyza's wondering glance. I couldn't help buying them. I felt as if I must have something pretty to look at right away. Oh, sister, said Analyza 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. 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. 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? Analyza remembered that it was Mr. Ramey's evening. When he came, the teutonic eye for anything that blooms made him turn it once to the jonquils. Ain't they pretty? he said. Seems like as if to Spring was really here. Don't it? Evelina exclaimed, thrilled by the coincidence of their thought. It's just what I was saying to my sister. Analyza 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. Ramey. Oh, she murmured with vague eyes, how I'd love to get away somewheres into the country this very minute. Somewheres where it was green and quiet. Seems as if I couldn't stand the city another day. But Analyza noticed that she was looking at Mr. Ramey and not at the flowers. I guess we might go to Central Park some Sunday. Their visitor suggested. Do you ever go there, Miss Evelina? No, we don't go very often. Least ways we ain't been for a good while. She sparkled at the prospect. It would be lovely, wouldn't it, Analyza? Why, yes, said the elder sister, coming back to her seat. Well, why don't we go next Sunday, Mr. Ramey continued, and we'll invite Miss Mellon's too. That'll make a cozy little party. 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. Analyza, 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. 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 bonded, awaiting Miss Mellon's knock. Miss Mellon's presently appeared in a glitter of jet sequins and spangles, with a tail 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. Ramey, his hair brushed with more than usual care, his broad hands encased in gloves of olive-green kid. The little party set out for the nearest street-car, and a flutter of mingled gratification and embarrassment stirred Analyza's bosom when it was found that Mr. Ramey 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. After this they resumed their walks, strolling on with a slowness of unaccustomed holiday-makers from one path to another, through budding shrubberies, past grass-banks sprinkled with lilac crocuses, and under rocks on which the forcithia lay like sudden sunshine. Everything about her seemed new and miraculously lovely to Analyza, but she kept her feelings to herself, leaving it to Evelina to exclaim at the hepatocas under the shady ledges, and to Miss Melons, 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 Melons' running commentary threw a glare of lurid possibilities over the placid family groups and their romping progeny. Analyza was in no mood for such interpretations of life, but, knowing that Miss Melons had been invited for the sole purpose of keeping her company, she continued to cling to the dressmaker's side, letting Mr. Ramey lead the way with Evelina. Miss Melons, 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 Analyza. Her feet accustomed to the slippery ease of the shop, ached with the unfamiliar effort of walking, and her ears with the din of the dressmaker'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. But even her heroism shrank from the significant glances which Miss Melons presently began to cast at the couple in front of them. Analyza could bear to connive at Evelina's bliss, but not to acknowledge it to others. 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. The return lived in Analyza'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. Analyza had never before felt so tired. Even Miss Melons's flow of narrative ran dry, and they sat silent, wedged between a negro woman and a pockmarked man with a bandaged head, while the car rumbled slowly down a squalid avenue to their corner. Evelina and Mr. Raimi sat together in the forward part of the car, and Analyza could catch only an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the clockmaker's shiny coat collar. But when the little party got out at their corner, the crowds swept them together again, and they walked back in the effortless silence of tired children to the Bunner sisters' basement. As Miss Melons and Mr. Raimi turned to go their various ways, Evelina mustered a last display of smiles, but Analyza crossed the threshold in silence, feeling the stillness of the little shop reach out to her like consoling arms. 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 Analyza! Weren't it heavenly? CHAPTER VI For four days after their Sunday in the park, the Bunner sisters had no news of Mr. Raimi. 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 ought to take that money out by now, Analyza. Analyza 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 unwanted opulence had been clouded by a suggestion of Miss Melons's that there were dark rumors concerning the savings bank in which their funds were deposited. They knew Miss Melons was given to vain alarms, but her words by the sheer force of repetition had so shaken Analyza's peace that after long hours of midnight council the sisters had decided to advise with Mr. Raimi. And on Analyza as the head of the house this duty had devolved. Mr. Raimi, when consulted, had not only confirmed the dressmaker'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 Analyza knew that Evelina alluded to the suggested transfer. Why, yes, to be sure, she agreed. Mr. Raimi said if he was us he wouldn't want to leave his money there any longer and he could help. It was over a week ago he said it, Evelina reminded her. 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. Analyza's words released their secret fear. I wonder what's happened to him, Evelina said. You don't suppose he could be sick? I was wondering too, Analyza rejoined, and the sisters looked down at their plates. I think you'd ought to do something about that money pretty soon, Evelina began again. Well, I know I'd ought her. What would you do if you was me? If I was you, said her sister, with perceptible emphasis and a rising blush, I'd go right round and see if Mr. Raimi was sick. You could. The words pierced Analyza like a blade. Yes, that's so, she said. It would only seem friendly if he really is sick. If I was you, I'd go today, Evelina continued, and after dinner Analyza went. On the way she had to leave a parcel at the dyers, and having performed that errand she turned toward Mr. Raimi'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 to all her faded virginal shyness, and with a brisk composure she turned the handle of the clockmaker's door. But as she entered her heart began to tremble, where she saw Mr. Raimi, 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 lusterless stare on Analyza. For a moment she thought he did not know her. Oh, you're sick, she exclaimed, and the sound of her voice seemed to recall his wandering senses. Why, if it ain't Miss Bonner, he said, in a low, thick tone. But he made no attempt to move, and she noticed that his face was the color of yellow ashes. You are sick, she persisted, emboldened by his evident need of help. Mr. Raimi, it was real unfriendly of you not to let us know. He continued to look at her with dull eyes. I ain't been sick, he said, least ways, not very. Only one of my old turns. He spoke in a slow, labored way, as if he had difficulty in getting his words together. Rheumatism, she ventured, seeing how unwillingly he seemed to move. Well, something like, maybe. I couldn't hardly put a name to it. If it was anything like rheumatism, my grandmother used to make a tea, Analyza began. She had forgotten in the warmth of the moment that she had only come as Evelyn's messenger. At the mention of tea, an expression of uncontrollable repugnance passed over Mr. Raimi's face. Oh, I guess I'm getting on all right. I've just got a headache today. Analyza's courage dropped at the note of refusal in his voice. I'm sorry, she said gently. My sister and maid have been glad to do anything we could for you. Thank you kindly, said Mr. Raimi wearily. Then, as she turned to the door, he added with an effort, maybe I'll step round to-morrow. We'll be real glad, Analyza 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 afterwards she remembered that it represented a Newfoundland dog with his paw on an open book. When she reached home there was a purchaser in the shop turning over hooks and eyes under Evelyn's absent-minded supervision. Analyza passed hastily into the back room, but in an instant she heard her sister at her side. Quick! I told her I was going to look for some smaller hooks. How is he? Evelyn aghast. He ain't been very well, said Analyza slowly, her eyes on Evelyn's eager face. But he says he'll be sure to be around to-morrow night. He will? Are you telling me the truth? Why, Evelyn a-bunner? Oh, I don't care! cried the younger recklessly, rushing back into the shop. Evelyn stood burning with the shame of Evelyn's self-exposure. She was shocked that even to her Evelyn 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. The next evening Mr. Raimi reappeared, still somewhat sallow and red-litted, but otherwise his usual self. Analyza 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, for as the sisters had learned, his culture soared beyond the newspapers, and read aloud with a fine confusion of consonants the poem on maidenhood. Evelyn lowered her eyes while he read. It was a very beautiful evening, and Analyza thought afterward how different life might have been with a companion who read poetry like Mr. Raimi. Chapter 7 of Bunner's Sisters. During the ensuing weeks Mr. Raimi, though his visits were as frequent as ever, did not seem to regain his usual spirits. He complained frequently of headache, but rejected Analyza's tentatively proffered remedies, and seemed to shrink from any prolonged investigation of his symptoms. July had come, with a sudden ardor of heat, and one evening, as the three sat together by the open window in the back room, Evelyn said, I don't know what I wouldn't give a night like this for a breath of real country air. So would I, said Mr. Raimi, knocking the ashes from his pipe, I'd like to be sitting in an arbor this very minute. Oh, wouldn't it be lovely? I always think it's real cool here. We'd be heaps hotter up where Miss Melons is, said Analyza. Oh, I daresay, that we'd be heaps cooler somewhere else, her sister snapped. She was not infrequently exasperated by Analyza's furtive attempts to mollify Providence. A few days later Mr. Raimi appeared with a suggestion which enchanted Evelynna. He had gone the day before to see his friend, Mrs. Hochmüller, who lived in the outskirts of Hoboken, and Mrs. Hochmüller had proposed that on the following Sunday he should bring the Bunner sisters to spend the day with her. She's got a real garden, you know, Mr. Raimi explained, with trees and a real summer house to set in, and hens and chickens too, and it's an elegant sail over on the ferry boat. The proposal drew no response from Analyza. She was still oppressed by the recollection of her interminable Sunday in the park, but obedient to Evelynna's imperious glance, she finally faltered out in acceptance. The Sunday was a very hot one, and once on the ferry boat Analyza 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. Raimi 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. Near the car finally stopped of its own accord, and they walked along a ruddy road past a stone-cutter's yard with a high fence tapestryed with theatrical advertisements, to a little red house with green blinds and a garden-pailing. Really Mr. Raimi had not deceived them. Clumps of dialetra and daylilies bloomed behind the pailing, and a crooked elm hung romantically over the gable of the house. At the gate Mrs. Hochmiller, a broad woman and a brick brown merino, met them with nods and smiles while her daughter Linda, a flaxen-haired girl with mottled red cheeks and a side long stare, hovered inquisitively behind her. Mrs. Hochmiller, 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 feather bed 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 parlor smelling of gingerbread. After another ceremonial pause, broken by polite inquiries 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. Hochmiller and Mr. Raimi, while the staring Linda bumped back and forth from the stove with steaming dishes. To analyze the dinner seemed endless and the rich fair strangely unappetizing. She was abashed by the easy intimacy of her hostess's voice and eye. With Mr. Raimi Mrs. Hochmiller was almost flippantly familiar, and it was only when Analyza pictured her generous form bent above his sick bed that she could forgive her for tersely addressing him as Raimi. During one of the pauses of the meal Mrs. Hochmiller laid her knife and fork against the edges of her plate and, fixing her eyes on the clock-maker's face, said, accusing Mrs. Hochmiller, you had one of them turns again Raimi. I don't know as I had, he returned evasively. Evelina glanced from one to the other. Mr. Raimi has 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. Oh, I know him, said Mrs. Hochmiller with a laugh, her eyes still on the clock-maker. Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Raimi? Mr. Raimi, who was looking at his plate, said suddenly one word which the sisters could not understand. It sounded to Analyza like shwike. Mrs. Hochmiller laughed again. My, my, she said, wouldn't you think he'd be ashamed to go and be sick and never tell me? Me, did nursed him through that awful fever. Yes, I should, said Evelina, with a spirited glance at Raimi, but he was looking at the sausages that Linda had just put on the table. When dinner was over, Mrs. Hochmiller invited her guests to step out of the kitchen door, and they found themselves in a green enclosure, half garden, half orchard. Gray hens, followed by golden broods, clucked under the twisted apple-bows, a cat dozed on the edge of an old well, and from tree to tree ran the network of clothes-line that denoted Mrs. Hochmiller's calling. 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-bows, Analyza thought of quiet afternoons in church, and of the hymns her mother had sung to her when she was a baby. Linda 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. "'I guess you got to go round by the road, then,' said Mrs. Hochmiller. "'My Linda, she goes through a hole in the fence, but I guess you'd tear your dress if you was to dry.' "'I'll help you,' said Mr. Ramey, 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. Hochmiller and Analyza were left alone in the summer house. Mrs. Hochmiller looked at her guest with a confidential smile. "'I guess they'll be gone quite a while,' she remarked, jerking her double chin toward the gap in the fence. Folks like that don't never remember about the dime.' And she drew out her knitting. Analyza could think of nothing to say. "'Your sister, she thinks a great lot of him, don't she?' her hostess continued. Analyza'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.' "'Oh, no, I ain't,' said Mrs. Hochmiller. "'You see, I take in washing. That's my business, and it's a lot cheaper doing it out here than in the city. Where'd I get a dry and ground like this in Holboken? And then it's safer for Linda to. It keeps her out of the streets.' "'Oh,' said Analyza, shrinking. She began to feel a distinctive version 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 Analyza that Evelina and her companion would never return from the wood. But they came back at length. Mr. Ramey's brow purled 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. "'Pose they'll revive,' she asked, holding up the ferns. But Analyza, rising at her approach, said stiffly, we'd better be getting home, Evelina.' "'Mercy me. Ain't you going to take your coffee first?' Mrs. Hochmiller protested, and Analyza 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 gray, 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 traveled 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. Analyza sat apart, looking away from the others. She had made up her mind that Mr. Ramey had proposed to Evelina in the wood, and she was silently preparing herself to receive her sister's confidence that evening. 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 Analyza had seen her in so uncommunicative a mood. The following Saturday Analyza was sitting alone in the shop when the door opened, and Mr. Ramey entered. He had never before called at that hour, and she wondered a little anxiously what had brought him. "'Has anything happened?' she asked, pushing aside the basket full of buttons she had been sorting. "'Not so I know of,' said Mr. Ramey tranquilly. "'But I always close up the store at two o'clock on Saturdays at this season, so I thought I might as well call round and see you.' "'I'm real glad I'm sure,' said Analyza, but Evelina's out. "'I know that,' Mr. Ramey answered. I met her round a corner. She told me she got to go to that new dyer's up in Forty-Eight Street. She won't be back for a couple of hours hardly, will she?' Analyza looked at him with rising bewilderment. "'No, I guess not,' she answered, her instinctive hospitality prompting her to add. Won't you sit down just the same?' Mr. Ramey sat down on the stool beside the counter, and Analyza returned to her place behind it. "'I can't leave the store,' she explained. "'Well, I guess we're very well here.' Analyza had become suddenly aware that Mr. Ramey 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. "'You're looking very well today, Miss Bunner,' said Mr. Ramey, following her gesture with a smile. "'Oh,' said Analyza nervously. "'I'm always well in health,' she added. "'I guess you're healthier than your sister, even if you are less sizable.' "'Oh, I don't know. Evelina's a mite nervous sometimes, but she ain't a bit sickly.' "'She eats harder than you do, but that don't mean nothing,' said Mr. Ramey. Analyza was silent. She could not follow the trend of his thought, and she did not care to commit herself further about Evelina before she had ascertained if Mr. Ramey considered nervousness interesting or the reverse. Mr. Ramey spared her all further in decision. "'Well, Miss Bunner,' he said, drawing his stool closer to the counter. "'I guess I might as well tell you first at last what I come here for today. I want to get married.' Analyza, 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. Ramey 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. At last she heard herself say, with a dry throat in which her heart was hammering, "'Mercy me, Mr. Ramey.' "'I want to get married,' he repeated. "'I'm too lonesome. It ain't good for a man to live all alone and eat nothing but cold meat every day.' "'No,' said Analyza softly, "'and the dust fairly beats me. "'Oh, the dust, I know.' Mr. Ramey stretched one of his blunt-fingered hands toward her. I wished you'd take me.' Still Analyza did not understand. She rose hesitatingly from her seat, pushing aside the basket of buttons which lay between them. Then she perceived that Mr. Ramey 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. "'Me? Me?' she gasped. "'I guess so,' said her suitor placidly. "'You suit me right down to the ground, Miss Bunner. That's the truth.' A woman passing along the street paused to look at the shop window and Analyza half hoped she would come in, but after a desultory inspection she went on. "'Maybe you don't fancy me,' Mr. Ramey suggested, discountenanced by Analyza's silence. A word of ascent was on her tongue, but her lips refused it. She must find some other way of telling him. "'I don't say that.' "'Well, I always kind of thought we was suited to one another,' Mr. Ramey continued, eased of his momentary doubt. I always liked a quiet style, no fuss and airs, and not afraid of work. He spoke as though dispassionately cataloguing her charms. Analyza felt that she must make an end. But Mr. Ramey, you don't understand. I've never thought of marrying.' Mr. Ramey looked at her in surprise. "'Why not?' "'Well, I don't know hardly.' 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, nor as young,' she added, with a last great effort. "'But you do most of the work here, anyways,' said her, suit her doubtfully. "'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, and I have to look after things,' she hastened on, half-pained, that her simple ruse should so readily deceive him. "'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. "'No, no,' she repeated, feeling the tears on her lashes. "'I couldn't, Mr. Ramey. I couldn't marry. I'm so surprised. I always thought it was Evelina, always. And so did everybody else. She's so bright and pretty. It seemed so natural. "'Well, you was all mistaken,' said Mr. Ramey obstinately. "'I'm so sorry,' he rose, pushing back his chair. "'You'd better think it over,' he said, in the large tone of a man who feels he may safely wait. "'Oh, no, no. It ain't any sort of use, Mr. Ramey. I don't never mean to marry. I get tired so easy. I'd be afraid of the work, and I have such awful headaches.' She paused, racking her brain for more convincing infirmities. "'Headaches, do you?' said Mr. Ramey, turning back. "'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.' "'Well, I'm sorry to hear it,' said Mr. Ramey. "'Thank you kindly all the same,' analyzed the murmured. "'And please don't—don't!' she stopped suddenly, looking at him through her tears. "'Oh, that's all right,' he answered. "'Don't you fret, Miss Bunner? Folks have got to suit themselves.' She thought his tone had grown more resigned since she had spoken of her headaches. 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.' "'Oh, my nose,' said Mr. Ramey, absolutely picking up his hat. "'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 paused, torn between her desire to turn his thoughts to Evelina. And the dread of prematurely disclosing her sister's secret. "'Don't Miss Evelina have no headaches?' Mr. Ramey suddenly asked. "'Mine—no—never. Well, not to speak of any way. She ain't had one for ages, and when Evelina is sick she won't ever give into it,' Annalisa declared, making some hurried adjustments with her conscience. "'I wouldn't have thought that,' said Mr. Ramey. "'I guess you don't know us as well as you thought you did.' "'Well, no, that's so. Maybe I don't.' "'I'll wish you good day, Miss Bunner,' and Mr. Ramey moved toward the door. "'Good day, Mr. Ramey,' Annalisa answered.' 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. She passed the next hour in a state of dreamy ecstasy, something had entered into her life of which no subsequent impoverishment 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 nightgown. 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 Analyza, 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 inner 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. CHAPTER VIII Mr. Ramey, after a decent interval, returned to the shop, and Analyza, when they met, was unable to detect whether the emotions which seetheed 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 Analyza'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 Analyza saw that the flush on Evelina's cheek was reflected from the same fire which had scorched her own. 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. Ramey proposed that the sisters should lock up early and go with him for a sale down the bay in one of the Coney Island boats. Analyza saw the light in Evelina's eye, and her resolve was instantly taken. I guess I won't go, thank you kindly, but I'm sure my sister will be happy too. She was pained by the perfunctory phrase with which Evelina urged her to accompany them, and still more by Mr. Ramey's silence. No, I guess I won't go, she repeated, rather an answer to herself than to them. It's dreadfully hot, and I've got a kinder headache. Oh, well, I wouldn't then, said her sister hurriedly. You better just sit here quietly and rest. Yes, I'll rest, Analyza assented. At two o'clock Mr. Ramey returned, and a moment later he and Evelina left the shop. Analyza had made herself another new bonnet for the occasion, a bonnet, Analyza thought, almost too youthful in shape and color. 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. When Analyza in later days looked back on that afternoon, she felt there had been something prophetic in the quality of its solitude. It seemed to distill the triple essence of loneliness in which all her afterlife 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. Evelina returned late and alone. Analyza felt the coming crisis in the sound of her footsteps, 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 Analyza smile if the pang had been less piercing, the younger sister prepared to confess herself. What are you so busy about, she said impatiently, as Analyza beneath the gas jet fumbled for the matches. Ain't she even got time to ask me if I had had a pleasant day? Analyza turned with a quiet smile. I guess I don't have to. Seems to me it's pretty plain you have. Well, I don't know. I don't know how I feel. It's all so queer. I almost think I'd like to scream. I guess you're tired. No, I ain't. It's not that. But it all happened so suddenly, and the boat was so crowded I thought everybody would hear what he was saying, Analyza, she broke out. Why on earth don't you ask me what I'm talking about? Analyza, with a last effort at heroism, feigned a fond incomprehension. What are you? Why, I'm engaged to be married. 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. I've known right along he was going too soon or later, only somehow I didn't think of it happening today. I thought he'd never get up his courage. He said he was so afraid I'd say no. That's what kept him so long from asking me. Well, I ain't said yes yet, least ways I told him I'd have to think it over. But I guess he knows. Oh, Analyza, I'm so happy! She hid the blinding brightness of her face. Analyza, 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 Rameys 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. The next few days were taken up with the embarrassed adjustment of their new relation to Mr. Ramey and to each other. Analyza's ardor 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 lead in hours up the same long steep of pain. Mr. Ramey came daily now. Every evening he and his betrothed went out for a stroll round 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 lamppost, Analyza said to herself, with sudden insight into unconjectured things. On Sundays they usually went for the whole afternoon to the Central Park, and Analyza, from her seat in the mortal hush of the back room, followed step by step their long, slow, beatific walk. There had been, as yet, no allusion to their marriage, except that Evelina had once told her sister that Mr. Ramey wished them to invite Mrs. Hochmüller and Linda to the wedding. The mention of the laundress raised a half-forgotten fear in Analyza, 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. Hochmüller. 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. Miss Lucky, she added with glacial irony, that I'm not too grand for Herman's friends. Oh, Analyza protested, that ain't what I mean, and you know it ain't. Only somehow the day we saw her I didn't think she seemed like the kind of person you'd want for a friend. 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. Analyza, 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 Analyza'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. 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-makers. They would doubtless take supper with her on Sundays. But already Analyza guessed with what growing perfectoriness her sister would fulfill these obligations. She even foresaw the day when, to get news of Evelina, she would have to lock the shop at nightfall and go herself to Mr. Ramey's door. But on that contingency she would not dwell. They can come to me when they want to, they'll always find me here, she simply said to herself. One evening Evelina came in flushed and agitated from her stroll around the square. Analyza saw at once that something had happened, but the new habit of reticence checked her question. She had not long to wait. Oh, Analyza, only to think what he says, the pronoun stood exclusively for Mr. Ramey. 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, this very next week. Next week? Yes, so as we can move out to St. Louis right away. Him and you move out to St. Louis? 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. Do I look queer, Analyza? Her eye was roving for the mirror. No you don't, said Analyza almost harshly. 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 so thoughtless he just put the letter into my hand without a word. It's from a big firm out there, the Tiffany of St. Louis, he says it is, offering him a place in their clock department. Seems they heard of him through a German friend of his that settled out there. It's a splendid opening and if he gives satisfaction they'll race him at the end of the year. 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. Then you'll have to go, came at last from Analyza. Evelina stared. You wouldn't have me interfere with his prospects would you? No, no I only meant has it got to be so soon? What a way I tell you, next week ain't it awful, blushed the bride. Well, this is what happened to mothers. They bore it, Analyza 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 even in its outward nearness. A 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 personable and inalienable tie, for pangs and problems of her own, was parching Analyza's soul. It seemed to her that she could never again gather strength to look her loneliness in the face. 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. Miss Mellon's true to her anticipations had been called on to aid in the making of the wedding dress, and she and Analyza were bending one evening over the breads of pearl-grey cashmere, which in spite of the dressmaker's prophetic vision of gourd satin, had been judged most suitable when Evelina came into the room alone. Analyza had already had occasion to notice that it was a bad sign when Mr. Ramey left his afiance at the door. It generally meant that Evelina had something disturbing to communicate, and Analyza's first glance told her that this time the news was grave. Miss Mellon's, 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. Mercy, Miss Evelina! I declare I thought she was a ghost the way you crept in. I had a customer once up in 49th Street, a lovely young woman, with a thirty-six bust and a waist you could put into her wedding-ring, and her husband he crept up behind her that way just 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 only six weeks old, and there she is to this day poor creature. I didn't mean to startle you, said Evelina. She sat down on the nearest chair, and as the lamplight fell on her face Analyza saw that she had been crying. You do look dead beat, Miss Mellon's resumed, after a pause of soul-probing scrutiny. I guess Mr. Ramey lugs you around that square too often. You'll walk your legs off if you ain't careful. Men don't never consider. They're all alike. Why? I had a cousin once that was engaged to a book agent. Maybe we'd better put away the work for tonight, Miss Mellon's, Analyza interposed. I guess what Evelina wants is a good night's rest. That's so assented the dressmaker. Have you got the back-breads run together, Miss Bunner? Here's the sleeves. I'll pin them together. She drew a cluster of pins from her mouth in which she seemed to secrete them as squirrels stole 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 tomorrow night. I guess you're a might-nerve, isn't you? I know when my turn comes I'll be scared to death. With this arch forecast she withdrew and Analyza, 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. The folds slipped from Analyza's hands. Evelina, Bunner, what you mean? Just what I say. It's put off. Put off. What's put off? Our getting married. He can't take me to St. Louis. He ain't gotten money enough. She brought the words out in the monotonous tone of a child reciting a lesson. Analyza picked up another bread of cashmere and began to smooth it out. I don't understand, she said at length. Well, it's plain enough. The journey's fearfully expensive, and we 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. That's all. But I thought he was going right into a splendid place. So he is, but the salary's pretty low the first year, and board's very high in St. Louis. He's just 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. But there's your money. Have you forgotten that? The hundred dollars in the bank. Evelina made an impatient movement. Of course I ain't forgotten it. Only 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. For a while Annalisa pondered this surprising statement. Then she ventured. Seems to me he might have thought of it before. 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. Annalisa 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. The sisters undressed without further words. After they had gone to bed, and the light had been put out, the sound of Evelina's weeping came to Annalisa 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. 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 Annalisa thought she slept. But with the dawn the eyes of the sisters met, and Annalisa's courage failed her as she looked in Evelina's face. She sat up in bed and put out a pleading hand. Don't cry so dearly, don't. Oh, I can't bear it, I can't bear it, Evelina moaned. Annalisa 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, only I didn't want to tell you till your wedding day. End of chapter 8