The long shadows of the afternoon's sun lay in the backyard of the Terriberry House when Essie sat down in the doorway to rest before her evening's work began. The girl's sad face rested in the palm of her hand and her shoulders drooped wearily as Mrs. Abe Tutts in her blue flannel yachting cap came down the road beside her friend Mrs. Jackson, who rustled richly in the watered silk raincoat which advertised the fact that she was either going to or returning from a social function. Mrs. Jackson's raincoat was a sure signal of social activity.
"Let's walk up clost along the fence and see how she's takin' it," suggested Mrs. Tutts amiably. "Gittin' the mitten is some of a pill to swaller. Don't you speak to her, Mis' Jackson?"
Mrs. Jackson glanced furtively over her shoulder and observed that Mrs. Symes was still standing on the veranda.
"If I come upon her face to face, but I don't go out of my way a-tall," she added in unconscious imitation of Mrs. Symes's newly-acquired languor of speech. "One rully can't afford to after her bein' so indiscreet and all."
"Rotten, I says" declared Mrs. Tutts tersely.
"She looks kinda pale around the gills s'well as I can see from here," opined Mrs. Jackson, staring critically as they passed along. They tittered audibly. "I tell you what, Mrs. Tutts, Essie ought to get to work and marry some man what'll put her right up in society where Alva put me."
A biting comment which it caused Mrs. Tutts real suffering to suppress was upon the tip of that lady's tongue, but it was gradually being borne in upon her that the first families were not given to actual hand-to-hand conflicts, so she checked it and inquired significantly instead—
"But could he, after ridin' over the country t'hout no chaperon and all?"
Mrs. Tutts had only recently found out about chaperons and their function, but, since she had she insisted upon them fiercely, and Mrs. Jackson was finally forced to admit that this violation of the conventions was indeed hard to overlook.
Essie Tisdale was too unhappy either to observe the passing of the women or their failure to recognize her. In the presence of this new, real grief their friendliness or lack of it seemed a small affair. The only thing which mattered was Ogden Van Lennop's going. The sun, for her, had gone down and with the inexperience of youth she did not believe it ever would rise again.