What he was to do with her, why he had taken on an added responsibility just when The Journal seemed on its last legs were doubtless sufficiently irritating questions. But more irritating must have been the flare-up of impulsiveness, the response to youth and romance, which he had been deliberately trying to deaden in himself and which he had hoped were permanently deadened. He had waded through realism and discouragements to a kind of refusal to care about anything more and here he was lending a hand to someone who would go through the same weary mess. She would be far better off in her stupid suburbanism. Someone would marry her and use the youth and the freshness to decorate another suburban home somewhere. She shouldn’t be encouraged. The persistence of the devil that had made all that old stuff leap up in him again!
Horatia went on to Maud’s. Maud was her sister, who had married to the full approbation of West Park and her own satisfaction. It came upon Horatia in the midst of her excitement at the beautiful way things were turning out that she was sorry for people who couldn’t have all this interest in their lives and particularizing she discovered a localized regret that Maud’s life wasn’t more colorful. She hadn’t seen her sister often that summer. Maud’s two babies had come close together, and on the advent of the second they had moved from their first apartment to a house on one of the city boulevards, which pleased Aunt Caroline immensely. Horatia had been in the house only once or twice, for Maud brought the children to West Park on Sundays and that had been almost enough sisterly intercourse for Horatia. But now she wanted to spread out her inspiration and she turned her steps towards Elm Boulevard.
It was a newly-built section of the city which took great pride in its residential restrictions and its extremely up-to-date houses of brick or stucco, each of them representing a vague travesty on some architectural period or “style.” The sleek, small lawns were chopped off neatly, one from another, by little hedges which were not too high to hide any of the beauties or improvements of the place from the passing motorist. Well polished cars stood in front of some of the houses, children in smocked frocks and gaily colored half-socks played in the lawn-swings or walked up and down the sidewalks. It was mid-afternoon and the comfortable-prosperous were enjoying themselves. Horatia felt the still orderliness of the atmosphere and realized again why Aunt Caroline was given to occasional remarks about how “well Maud had done.”
She turned in at her sister’s house and Maud, who was sitting on the porch with her baby in her arms, jumped up to welcome her volubly and to introduce her to two other ladies as cool and plump and white-clad as Maud herself.
“Did you walk out this wretchedly hot day—all the way from town?”
Horatia had not felt the heat but she put a suddenly self-conscious hand up to her hair and hat under her sister’s solicitous inquiry. She found she was hot and moist beside these cool suburban ladies.
“I am hot,” she admitted. “May I go up and wash?”
The inside of the house was pleasanter than she had remembered. It was cool, its shades were drawn against the heat. Clean, pretty colors everywhere, and as she passed the children’s room the whiteness and pinkness of it charmed her.
She went down to the porch refreshed and admiring. Even if the Williams had chosen this location where there was no lake view and the houses were rather closely set, it had distinct advantages. She told Maud so and Maud was obviously greatly pleased.
“I knew I was right in insisting on this part of town,” she said. “A lake view is all right and so is the country. But unless you have oodles of money and three or four cars and a regular estate it is much better to settle in one of the good residence districts.”