Part 4 (1/2)
After their first breathless ”Oh!” of pleasure there was a silence of mutual consultation, which Ann Eliza at last broke by saying: ”You better go with Mr. Ramy, Evelina. I guess we don't both want to leave the store at night.”
Evelina, with such protests as politeness demanded, acquiesced in this opinion, and spent the next day in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a white chip bonnet with forget-me-nots of her own making. Ann Eliza brought out her mosaic brooch, a cashmere scarf of their mother's was taken from its linen cerements, and thus adorned Evelina blus.h.i.+ngly departed with Mr. Ramy, while the elder sister sat down in her place at the pinking-machine.
It seemed to Ann Eliza that she was alone for hours, and she was surprised, when she heard Evelina tap on the door, to find that the clock marked only half-past ten.
”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. Ramy 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 Ann Eliza conned her glowing face. ”Did you ever hear anything so silly? I didn't know which way to look.”
Ann Eliza 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 gla.s.s above the chest of drawers.
”You're jest lovely,” said Ann Eliza.
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 cl.u.s.ter of jonquils in her hand.
”I was just that foolish,” she answered Ann Eliza's wondering glance, ”I couldn't help buyin' 'em. I felt as if I must have something pretty to look at right away.”
”Oh, sister,” said Ann Eliza, in trembling sympathy. She felt that special indulgence must be conceded to those in Evelina's state since she had had her own fleeting vision of such mysterious longings as the words betrayed.
Evelina, meanwhile, had taken the bundle of dried gra.s.ses 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?”
Ann Eliza remembered that it was Mr. Ramy's evening.
When he came, the Teutonic eye for anything that blooms made him turn at once to the jonquils.
”Ain't dey pretty?” he said. ”Seems like as if de 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.”
Ann Eliza got up suddenly and moved away; she remembered that she had not wound the clock the day before. Evelina was sitting at the table; the jonquils rose slenderly between herself and Mr. Ramy.
”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 Ann Eliza noticed that she was looking at Mr. Ramy, and not at the flowers.
”I guess we might go to Cendral Park some Sunday,” their visitor suggested. ”Do you ever go there, Miss Evelina?”
”No, we don't very often; leastways we ain't been for a good while.” She sparkled at the prospect. ”It would be lovely, wouldn't it, Ann Eliza?”
”Why, yes,” said the elder sister, coming back to her seat.
”Well, why don't we go next Sunday?” Mr. Ramy continued. ”And we'll invite Miss Mellins too--that'll make a gosy 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. Ann Eliza, covertly observing her, felt that Evelina was not sorry to be observed, and that her own acute consciousness of the act was somehow regarded as magnifying its significance.