You heard the two on their way up the street, arm in arm, laughing.
“Come Dirk.”
“Are we going to sleep here!” He was delighted.
“Right here, all snug in the hay, like campers.”
The boy lay down, wriggling, laughing. “Like gypsies. Ain’t it, Mom?”
“ ‘Isn’t it,’ Dirk—not ‘ain’t it’.” The school teacher.
She lay down beside him. The boy seemed terribly wide awake. “I liked the Mabel one best, didn’t you? She was the nicest, h’m?”
“Oh, much the nicest,” said Selina, and put one arm around him and drew him to her, close. And suddenly he was asleep, deeply. The street became quieter. The talking and laughter ceased. The lights were dim at Chris Spanknoebel’s. Now and then the clatter of wheels and horses’ hoofs proclaimed a late comer seeking a place, but the sound was not near by, for this block and those to east and west were filled by now. These men had been up at four that morning, must be up before four the next.
The night was cool, but not cold. Overhead you saw the wide strip of sky between the brick buildings on either side of the street. Two men came along singing. “Shut up!” growled a voice from a wagon along the curb. The singers subsided. It must be ten o’clock and after, Selina thought. She had with her Pervus’s nickel watch, but it was too dark to see its face, and she did not want to risk a match. Measured footsteps that passed and repassed at regular intervals. The night policeman.
She lay looking up at the sky. There were no tears in her eyes. She was past tears. She thought, “Here I am, Selina Peake, sleeping in a wagon, in the straw, like a bitch with my puppy snuggled beside me. I was going to be like Jo in Louisa Alcott’s book. On my feet are boots and on my body a dyed dress. How terribly long it is going to be until morning . . . I must try to sleep. . . . I must try to sleep . . .”