“Did you say your bread was in the oven?” Julie inquired.
“Yes, my bread-rolls; yes, that’s right. I got to go.” Mrs. Wicket turned away. “But I do think that’s mighty funny, Julie,” she called back as she went down the walk.
Julie shut her door and sat down in a chair. Suddenly she was extraordinarily limp and exhausted. Her anger with its glorious exaltation had evaporated, leaving her face to face with the appalling things to which it had swept her.
“Why, I told her—I just told her everything right out!” she whispered. “She’ll tell everybody; they’ll all be talking about it now. An’ I was short to Mrs. Silas Randolph, of all people! And look how I answered Kitty Jeffers about her waist. They won’t either of ’em like it. They’ll all be talking about me.” Then her relaxed mind gave back to her—what she had not noticed at the time—the words of encouragement the loafer at the station had cried to her: “That’s right, Julie; don’t take any foolishness off’n Ed! You got him goin’ now!” Why—how awful! Right out there on the station platform! How awful for her to have laid herself open to such conspicuousness! She shuddered, all her nerves tightening once more with self-consciousness, and her cheeks burning. “Oh, what a fool you are! Oh, how they’ll talk about you! They won’t any of ’em understand!” Glancing up, she saw her face again in the mirror, and now it was the same white and anxious reflection that had looked out at her in the morning. Something in its impotent appeal brought back the look of unprotected despair in the face of the little man on the train. “Oh, I understand, I do understand,” she burst out passionately. “Don’t look that way, don’t take it so hard! Folks don’t understand, but I do!” And she hardly knew whether her words were addressed to his tragedy or to her own.
V
It was two days afterward that Julie saw Mr. Bixby again. She knew his name now. The Hart’s Run News had announced that Mr. Timothy Bixby, an expert printer and typesetter, had accepted the position left vacant by the departure of Hobson Jones, who had left for Camp Lee to answer his call to the colors. The News added further, “We are glad to welcome Mr. and Mrs. Bixby to our midst.”
So that woman was his wife after all.
Their next meeting occurred when Mr. Bixby made his way to Julie’s little shop, sent by his wife to match some pink yarn for a sweater she was knitting. It was just like her, Julie thought, to be knitting a sweater for herself when all the rest of the women were at work on khaki wool for the soldiers. And like her, too, to send her husband, because she was ashamed to ask for it herself. Julie had time to think of these things because she was busy at the hat counter with a customer, and so had to let Maida Watkins, who sometimes helped her out in the shop, wait on Mr. Bixby.
“Pink wool?” Maida demanded sharply, her cold young eyes piercing him, and her teeth snapping together on her chewing-gum. Maida had been expressing superiority, leisure, and indifference, as she stood behind the counter, ruminating slowly upon her gum, the while she patted her blond hair from time to time, or examined her polished nails; but when Mr. Bixby entered, and holding out the sample made his timid request, she shot “Pink wool” at him, and clenched her teeth so tight on her gum that the muscles stood out on either side of her jaws. The color swept up uncomfortably to his eyes, making his face look blurred and helpless.
“Yes, marm, if you please, marm: to match this sample if you got it,” he stammered.