Annan coolly put both arms around his aunt and kissed her—a thing that had not occurred since he was in college.
“I’ll drop in for tea before you beat it to Newport,” he said. “Then you tell me some more about Jeanne d’Espremont.”
He gave her another hearty smack and went out gaily, leaving Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt with glassy, astonished eyes, and a little, selfish, tucked-in mouth that was slightly quivering.
CHAPTER XIX
THE day was warm enough to be uncomfortable. Except in recesses of parks, New York is never fragrant. Once it was—when the odour of lindens filled the Broad-Way from the Fort to St. Paul’s. Wild birds sang in every street. Washington was President. Green leaves and scent and song are gone where “The Almond Tree shall flourish,” deep planted in the heart of man.
As far as perfume is concerned, neither the eastward avenues nor cross-streets suggested Araby to Annan. He carried, as usual, a large pasteboard box full of flowers.
Jane Street runs west out of Greenwich Avenue. Shabby red brick buildings with rusty fire-escapes, lofts, stables, a vista of swarming tenements through which runs a sagging pavement set with pools of water—and, on the south side, half a dozen rickety three-story-and-basement houses—this is Jane Street.
The little children of the poor shrilled and milled about him as he threaded his way among push-cart men and trucks and mounted the low stoop of the house where Eris lived.
It seemed clean enough inside as he climbed the narrow stairs, manœuvering his big box full of flowers.
He could hear her negro maid-of-all-work busy in the kitchen as he knocked,—hear her call out gaily: “Miss Eris! Miss Eris, somebody’s knockin’ an’ I can’t leave mah kitchen——”