Julie was blank with disappointment, but it was useless to insist, so she left the letter sealed and stamped and ready for the address. She did not know it, but that night when all the house was quiet, old Miss Fogg slipped out and, going secretly down a side street, posted the letter which she had managed to address, after looking all about and up and down to be sure that no one was spying at her.
XVIII
The summer days slipped by. The intense city heat of mid-August burned itself up toward September.
Old Miss Fogg waited and waited, but there came no answer to the letter. Julie fought against the old woman’s despairing disappointment, buoying her up with the power of her own spirit. She had often the feeling that wide wings spread themselves, out of the sheer force of her devotion, and bore that broken and defeated bit of old age up into a sunny atmosphere. Then she would be rewarded for all her pains. A faint flush would run into the old cheeks, she would look at Julie out of clear eyes from which all the crafty despair was momentarily gone, and which were almost as serene as the eyes of a happy child. It was that look which was a reward for all Julie’s efforts. She was thinking of it, hoping for it one day as she came along the street late in the afternoon. She was to have a little party for Miss Fogg that evening. The old woman was coming down to have supper with Julie and Tim and perhaps, if they could coax her into it, to go to a moving picture afterward. For the occasion Julie had done up one of Miss Fogg’s white muslin waists for her, earlier in the afternoon. She had done it with especial care, and was proud of her handiwork. She took it upstairs, holding it daintily on a coat-hanger so as not to wrinkle its perishable freshness, and displayed it to the old woman. Miss Fogg had looked really pleased, and had promised to put it on.
Julie was bringing home now a number of small packages for the supper party. All the preparations filled her with an intensity of happiness. So much so that merely doing them was not enough; she must sit down a moment and think them all over. Accordingly, when she came to Monroe Park on her homeward way, she sat down for a moment on one of its benches. The park was shady, with the slanting green-gold light of late afternoon sifting through the trees. Silver showers from the fountain sprayed up and caught the sunlight, and groups of very small children, looking almost unearthly in that glamour of green and gold effulgence, ran and played upon the grass, or up and down the paths, their laughter a whimsical undercurrent beneath the grown-up noises of the city.
Julie let her eyes rest happily upon them, while through her mind there drifted one pleasant picture after another: Miss Fogg’s crisp shirt-waist, the pleased look on her old face when Julie had brought it to her; the purchasing of the materials for the party, all of which lay now in her market basket beside her; the little basket itself, which had been a gift from Tim, so neat and pretty with a gay pink pattern woven into it. Then going forward she visualized the supper-table spread with clean linen and set forth with her rosebud china, which also had been a gift from Tim. Julie was an artist in homemaking, and these small and happy things were the material of her art. Out of them she was to weave a little supper which was for her almost as much a creative act as is the composition of a symphony for a musician. In the ardent contemplation of her small creation, she overflowed with joy.
“Oh Lord, I’m so happy—so happy! I got to make a gift out of the happiness!”
She rose then and made her way home. Arrived there, she put her bundles carefully away in their little makeshift ice-box, which Tim had devised and which was really very successful, and then passed through into the front room to look forth and see if he might by any chance be coming. The shutters were drawn together to exclude the heat. Stooping, she peeped through them and, in the bright sunlight without, saw a figure coming up the walk, the sight of which made her suddenly fall down upon her knees beneath the window sill, crouching close against the wall.
It was Elizabeth Bixby; and she was entering the house now.
She came so close upon Julie’s entrance that it was impossible not to suppose she had seen her and was following. Julie crouched helplessly beneath the window. She wanted to run to the door and lock it fast, but she felt powerless to move. She cowered in a heap upon the floor, waiting for Elizabeth to enter and find her.