This ascendancy persisted through the first half dozen years of schooling; and then it began, gradually, to disappear. In high school, it was not so marked; and at graduation, she and Wint—for example—were fairly on a par.
Then Wint went to college while Hetty went to work. She worked first in a store and lost that place for swearing at her employer. Then she took up housework, and so gravitated to the Chase household. There Wint encountered her; and within a day or so he discovered that the years since high school had borne him far ahead of Hetty. She now was beginning to recede; her wave had reached its height and was subsiding. He still bore on.
These things may be observed more intimately in a small town; for there, social differences do not so strictly herd the sheep apart from the goats. Thus, while Hetty was his mother’s handmaid, neither Wint nor any one else outspokenly considered her his inferior. She called him Wint, he called her Hetty, and his mother likewise.
Wint found her presence vaguely disturbing. That first night at supper, she had winked at him behind his father’s back. The wink somewhat chilled him. It savored of hardness—And there were other incidents. Wint perceived that Hetty was no longer a schoolgirl; she was, vaguely, sophisticated. Her old recklessness and daring remained; but they were inspired now not by ebullient spirits but by indifference, by bravado.
Wint and Hetty had been, to some extent, comrades in their school days. Once or twice he had defended her against aggression; once he had fought a boy who had told tales on her to the teacher. Hetty had never thanked him; she had even scolded and abused him for this knight-errantry, declaring her ability to take care of herself. Nevertheless, there was gratitude in her. She brought him apples, hiding them secretly in his desk.
On the Friday evening before election, as has been said, Wint and Jack Routt played pool together at the hotel. Afterwards, in spite of Routt’s protests, they went together to the stairway in the alley; and when eventually Wint reached home, he was unsteady on his feet.
His father and mother were abed. The door was never locked, so that he entered the hall without difficulty; but the only light was an electric bulb in the rear of the hall, near the kitchen door, and when he went back to extinguish this, he tripped over a rug and barely saved a fall.
While he was still tottering, the kitchen door opened and Hetty looked out at him. She had on her hat, so that he saw she, too, had just come in. He smiled at her amiably, holding on to the wall for support; and she laughed softly and came and caught his arm.
“Oh, you Wint!” she chided.