"The political economies are needed in a hurry and they are in this crate. Then the histories, natural science, miscellaneous, fiction and poetry. If you get into difficulties you can telephone up."
When she had gone Jean stood for a moment just where she was.
"Oh Patsy, a corpse has a sense of humor compared to a librarian! But it's nine a week."
CHAPTER THREE
Every morning at eight Jean crossed the Bay and every night at six she returned. The trains and the boats were always crowded, and very shortly Jean came to know certain faces and to watch for them. She liked to speculate as to what these people did, how long they had been doing it and whether they liked it. When she had made up her mind about a man or woman it always disappointed her to have to readjust her deductions by catching scraps of conversation that upset her theories. She often had to do this, however, because she was always making sweeping generalizations based on tenuous details. There were certain groups that came and went together, and although they seemed to have no connection beyond this short trip twice a day, they always looked eagerly for each other as if in dread of having to make the journey alone. They resented ever having to sit anywhere except in their usual places, and each group surrounded itself with a barrier of self-centered interest that separated it from every other self-centered group.
At first Jean ate lunch with Miss MacFarland and two other women workers, but, as she wrote to Pat, it made her feel "like a mouse nibbling at the edges of a book," and as soon as she could, broke the arrangement, and took her lunch to a nearby park. Here in the seclusion of a thick hedge, little birds came for crumbs and beyond the hedge, unseen people crunched the gravel and Jean caught scraps of their talk, unconnected bits, like scraps of patchwork.
She liked to tell Miss MacFarland about these unseen people, draw pictures of the comedies and tragedies beyond the hedge, because Miss MacFarland always listened so politely and looked so puzzled. Her thick brown eyes searched vaguely for the point of the story, and Jean knew it was only because the cataloguing was well done, that Miss MacFarland did not consider her a lunatic.
But as the weeks passed and the newness of the work dulled to a routine of writing the names of books on cards and putting numbers after them, Jean began to wonder whether in time, she, too, might not come to look vaguely for the point of a story, and prefer to drink strong tea in a stuffy room. At first the idea amused her and she elaborated it in a whimsical letter to Pat, but with the coming of the winter rains, the whimsy died, and the vision of herself in broad-toed shoes and black silesia sleeve protectors, began to follow her home every night. Now the crowds on the boat were damp and peevish and, when the boat docked, each scuttled for his own shelter, indifferent to the others.
But it was on wet Sundays that Miss MacFarland persisted beyond Jean's power to dislodge. Then Tom lounged all day in smoking jacket and slippers, dropping into brief slumber in his chair, while Tommykins cut up the colored supplement of the day's paper on the floor. Martha prepared elaborate meals and went to St. Jude's in the early morning, at four in the afternoon and eight at night. Between cooking and church, she read the lives of Anglican saints, alone in her room.
With the lighting of the street lamps on these wet Sunday nights, the town sank into the stillness of death. Only once, during the evening, did the silence ever part, to let the worshipers from evening service slip through. With soft padding of rubbered feet, a few figures slipped by the window, stealthily, as if afraid of desecrating the holiness of the Sabbath by any motion of their bodies.