Eva said this as she was winding a cloud of fleecy worsted around her head, and Harry was settling himself at his writing-table in a little alcove curtained off from the parlor.
"Don't keep the old ladies up too late," said Harry.
"Never you fear," said Eva. "Perhaps I shall stay to see Jack's feet washed and blanket spread. Those are solemn and impressive ceremonies that I have heard described, but never witnessed."
It was a bright, keen, frosty, starlight evening, and when Eva had rung the door-bell on the opposite side, she turned and looked at the play of shadow and firelight on her own window-curtains.
Suddenly she noticed a dark form of a woman coming from an alley back of the house, and standing irresolute, looking at the windows. Then she drew near the house, and seemed trying to read the name on the door-plate.
There was something that piqued Eva's curiosity about these movements, and just as the door was opening behind her into the Vanderheyden house, the strange woman turned away, and as she turned, the light of the street-lamp flashed strongly on her face. Its expression of haggard pain and misery was something that struck to Eva's heart, though it was but a momentary glimpse, as she turned to go into the house; for, after all, the woman was nothing to her, and the glimpse of her face was purely an accident, such as occurs to one hundreds of times in the streets of a city.
Still, like the sound of a sob or a cry from one unknown, the misery of those dark eyes struck painfully to Eva's heart; as if to her, young, beloved, gay and happy, some of the ever-present but hidden anguish of life—the great invisible mass of sorrow—had made an appeal.
But she went in and shut the door, gave one sigh and dismissed it.