“Oh, dear! Oh, dear me,” dropping her head on the arm of her chair.
Tessa turned another leaf. “Moreover when I was a child and about fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to learning; on which account the high priests and principal men of the city came then frequently to me together, in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law.”
Her eyes wandered away from the book and out the open window towards the rows of open windows in the houses behind the stables. At one window was seated an old man reading; in the same room, for he raised his head to speak to her, at another window, a woman was sitting reading also. She was glad that there were two. She wondered if they had been kind to each other as long as they had known each other. If the old man should die to-night would the old woman have need to say, “Forgive me.” Through the windows above came the heavy, steady whirr of a sewing-machine, with now and then a click, as if the long seam had come to its end; the bushy, black head of a German Jew was bent over it; the face that he raised was not at all like that of the refined Flavius Josephus. No one ever went to him with knotty points in the law! There were plants in the other window of the room; she was glad of the plants. It was rather mournful to be seeking things to be glad about. A child was crying, sharply, rebelliously; a woman’s sharper voice was breaking in upon it.
There was a voice in the stable speaking to a horse, “Quiet, old boy.” A horse was brought out and harnessed to a buggy without a top. Dr. Greyson climbed into the buggy and drove off. Another horse was brought out and harnessed to a buggy with a top. She persuaded herself that she was very much interested in watching people and things; she had not had time to think of Felix yet. Dr. Lake came out, sprang into the buggy, and drove slowly out, not looking towards the windows where sat the two figures, each apparently absorbed in a book.
“Tessa,” in a broken voice, like the appeal of a naughty child with the naughtiness all gone, “what shall I do?”
“I don’t know,” said Tessa.
“You don’t think that I ought to marry him. He smells of medicine so.”
“I do not think any thing. If I did think any thing, it would be my thinking and not yours.”
“Do you believe that he cares so very much?”
The exultant undertone was too much for Tessa’s patience.