Lottie said aloud, "No, it isn't." And within: "If I could only jump out of this old rattle-trap and into a boat—a boat with sails all spread—and away to that place over there that's the horizon. Oh, God, how I'd ... but I suppose I'd only land at Indiana Harbor instead of at the horizon." Then aloud again, "If you and Aunt Charlotte think you'll be comfortable here for twenty minutes or so I'll just walk up as far as the pier and back."
"That's right," from Aunt Charlotte. "Do you good. What's more"—she chuckled an almost wicked chuckle—"I'd never come back, if I were you."
Mrs. Carrie Payson eyed her sister witheringly. "Don't be childish, Charlotte."
Out on the walk, her face toward the lake, her head lifted, her hands jammed into her sweater pockets, Lottie was off.
A voice was calling her.
"What?"
"Your hat! You forgot your hat!"
"I don't want it." She turned resolutely away from the maternal voice and the hat. Her mother's head was stuck out of the car door. Lottie heard, unheeding, a last faint "Sunburn!" and "Complexion." A half mile up, a half mile back. Walking gave her a sense of freedom, of exhilaration; helped her to face the rest of the day.
In the evening they often drove round to Belle's; or about the park again on warm summer nights.
But on this particular March afternoon the Reading Club once more claimed Lottie. One of the Readers had married. This was her long-planned afternoon at home for the girls. Her newly-furnished four-room apartment awaited their knowing inspection. Her wedding silver and linen shone and glittered for them. Celia Sprague was a bride at thirty-six, after a ten-years' engagement.