Mr. Farley spread his coat-tails and sat down on the oak chair with the imitation leather seat. Alice's remarks about her mother made him feel guilty.
"We should have gotten up earlier so your mother wouldn't have the dishes to worry about."
"I'm going to wash 'em," Alice said shortly.
It was a hot day. The clouded sky was a colorless glare. A thick wind stirred the ragged awnings upstairs before the bedroom windows. For a moment the sun came out as though an eye had opened. The house fronts were a pale bright pink. Dust made little eddies in the empty Sunday street. The awnings lifted, then hung inert like broken wings. When a wagon passed you could hear, above the rattle of the wheels, the muffled thud of the horse's feet striking the soft asphalt.
May was on the front steps. She wore a very stiffly starched white dress and a pink sash, wilted and wrinkled by many tyings. Her hair was brushed back very smooth and gathered away from her forehead with a flapping bow. Pale with interest, her small face turned toward the corner of the square as she watched for the Prices to come.
In the parlor, Winnie stood out of sight behind the freshly laundered curtains, and watched too. Laurence had left the house. She wondered if he were going to avoid her parents.
As the time passed the sun disappeared again and shadows flowed into the street which was as gray and still as water.
When the equipage with shining lacquered sides flashed into the empty place May looked at it bewildered, but Winnie had seen it through the window and recognized her parents.
The carriage drew up before the house and the wheels scraping the curb made a long rasping sound. The chestnut horses were fat. Their harness twinkled. They wriggled the stumps of their clipped tails against the cruppers that constrained them. On their breasts where the circingles had rubbed and on their flanks and buttocks the hair was darkened and matted with lather.
May was afraid and proud because the beautiful horses stood before her home. They stamped. A shiver ran along their satin bellies. Their breasts and forelegs quivered with tension as they jerked their heads in the check reins and pressed the street with harsh hoofs below their rigid ankles. Watching them, May uttered a little cry of terror and delight; but she thought some one had heard her and she clapped her hand over her mouth.