PART TWO
PART TWO
CHAPTER VIII
Three days after the homing birds flitting about the old foundry on the river road witnessed the betrothal of George and Helen, Mrs. George William Cutter was seen to issue from her residence at five o’clock in the afternoon. It was barely possible at any time to do this on Wiggs Street without being observed by the secret eyes of your neighbors and exciting a purely private interest in where you were going. But it was absurdly impossible for Mrs. Cutter to have escaped on this occasion without exciting the liveliest curiosity, owing to the way she looked and her obvious destination, as compared with what she had been saying quite freely for the last three months to any one who wanted to know what her feelings and opinions were concerning a certain matter.
Her hair was crimped, although this was Thursday and she never put it up on hairpins except on Saturday nights “for Sunday.” She wore a small, glistening, lavender straw hat wreathed in lilacs of that shade of pink grown only by milliners. A helpless thing securely pinned on, which somehow gave the impression of having involuntarily drawn back from her face in a mild flowerlike terror of this face. Any one seeing her might have understood the feelings of this hat. Her countenance seemed to burn, probably from the summer heat, possibly from some fiery emotion. Her red brown eyes spat sparks, her neck was bowed until she accomplished what Nature had not designed she should have, a wrinkle that made a thin double chin.
Her frock was of gray silk, high at the neck, tight at the waist, full in the skirt, “garnished” with three graduated bands of satin ribbon above a flounce at the bottom. It rustled richly as she walked, and she fairly crimped the ground as she walked, taking short, emphatic steps, as if the high heels of her slippers were stings with which she stung whatever was lawful for an indignant woman to sting with her heels.