As he spoke I thought that his roving eye (perhaps it was only my own!) fell upon Johnny Holcomb, whose married life has been full of vicissitudes.
“John, take this home with you; you can use it.”
“Nope, no such married life for me,” I thought I could hear him responding, rather pleased than not to be the butt of the auctioneer.
“Do I hear any bids?” the Great Auctioneer was saying, almost in the words of Mr. Harpworth. “What! No one wants n married life like this? Well, put it aside, Jake. It isn't wanted. Too old-fashioned.”
It was Julia Templeton herself who now appeared with certain of the intimate and precious “bedroom things”—a wonderful old linen bedspread, wrought upon with woollen figures, and exaling an ancient and exquisite odour of lavender, and a rag rug or so, and a little old rocking chair with chintz coverings in which more than one Templeton mother had rocked her baby to sleep. Julia herself——
I saw Julia, that hard-favoured woman, for the first time at that moment, really saw her. How fiercely she threw down the spread and the rugs! How bold and unweeping her eyes! How hard and straight the lines of her mouth!
“Here they are, Mr. Harpworth!”
How shrill her voice; and how quickly she turned back to the noisy kitchen! I could see the angular form, the streakings of gray in her hair. ...
“What am I offered now for this precious antique? This hand-made spread? Everything sold without reserve! Come, now, don't let this opportunity slip by.” He leaned forward confidentially and persuasively: “Fellah citizens, styles change and fashions pass away, but things made like these, good lines, strong material, honest work, they never grow old....”
Here the Shadowy Auctioneer broke in again and lifted me out of that limited moment.