The crowd on the step jostled her forward, the conductor, like a specialized machine, bellowed his—"Step forward. Fare please. Step forward. Plenty of room in the front of the car."
Through the jam on the back platform Anne looked back and glimpsed Roger, already hurrying away, holding to his hat. A strange mingling of fear and exultation rushed over her.
"Mrs. Roger Barton."
She tried to think of it calmly, as indifferently as any one of the strangers in the car would have thought of it, but the realization danced like electricity along her nerves.
Three-quarters of an hour later, Roger accepted the position of private secretary to Hilary Wainwright, at fifty a week, the work to begin in two weeks.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next afternoon while Anne packed her trunk, her mother kept wandering to the door and gazing in the puzzled excitement of a child who encounters something pleasant, but so extraordinary and unexpected that its delight is lost in bewilderment—like being confronted with a Christmas tree on the Fourth of July. Without turning from her task, Anne felt her come, stare, decide to say something and go, unable to express her thought.
At last the trunk was packed, locked and corded. Anne rose and smiled at her mother, again in the doorway.
"By the look on your face, one would think you had never expected me to marry."