On the stairs that night, Stanley again caught Early Ann and kissed her. The girl fought silently but furiously to free herself, and it was during the struggle that Sarah came upon them.
Stud's wife was suddenly overborne with her age, her fragility, and her helplessness. For a moment she was jealous, angry with them both, and bitter. The following moment she was thinking of Stanley and wondering if he weren't entitled to be faithless just once in his life. Sarah felt that she would be the last person in the world to keep another from happiness. Then she remembered Early Ann, and she was afraid for the girl as though she had been her own daughter. Heartsick, frightened, but determined to face the issue; lost, bewildered, so in love with Stanley that it hurt her in the pit of her stomach,—Sarah, in that long moment before she spoke experienced half a life-time of sorrow, and the despair of millions of women of her age, standing in lamplight on the worn stairs, looking a little older.
"You might at least think of Early Ann," she said.
CHAPTER XIV
1
Shortly after midnight Peter was awakened with lantern light in his eyes, and he sprang out of bed, smelling the fog and knowing that case weather had come.
He stumbled into his overalls and followed his father and Gus down the stairs and out into the yard where Vern Barton, Dutchy Bloom and others were waiting. The fog was so thick that a man might have lost his way in his own barnyard. The lanterns looked like fox fire at twenty feet.