“Was the Park very full?” his wife asked.
“Crowded. It’s one of their last chances for the year.”
“I suppose it made you homesick.”
“Horribly,” said the husband, with his head still half out of the window. He took it in, and listened with the tolerance of a husband while she explained him to Ray.
“My husband’s so homesick for the old Family place—it was a pretty place!—that he almost dies when he goes into the Park; it brings it all back so. Are you homesick, too, Mr. Ray?”
“Well, not exactly for the country,” said Ray. “I’ve been homesick for the place I came from—for Midland, that is.”
“Midland?” Denton repeated. “I’ve been there. I think those small cities are more deadly than New York. They’re still trying to get rid of the country, and New York is trying to get some of it back. If I had my way, there wouldn’t be a city, big or little, on the whole continent.” He did not wait for any reply from Ray, but he asked his wife, “Who’s come?”
She mentioned a number of names, ten or twelve, and he said, “We’d better go in,” and without further parley he turned toward the curtained avenue to the front room.
XVI.
In the front room the little assemblage had the effect of some small religious sect. The people were plainly dressed in a sort of keeping with their serious faces; there was one girl who had no sign of a ribbon or lace about her, and looked like a rather athletic boy in her short hair and black felt hat, and her jacket buttoned to her throat. She sat with her hands in the side pockets of her coat, and her feet pushed out beyond the hem of her skirt. There were several men of a foreign type, with beards pointed and parted; an American, who looked like a school-master, and whose mouth worked up into his cheek at one side with a sort of mechanical smile when he talked, sat near a man who was so bald as not to have even a spear of hair anywhere on his head. The rest were people who took a color of oddity from these types; a second glance showed them to be of the average humanity; and their dress and its fashion showed them to be of simple condition. They were attired with a Sunday consciousness and cleanliness, though one gentleman, whose coat sleeves and seams were brilliant with long use, looked as if he would be the better for a little benzining, where his moustache had dropped soup and coffee on his waistcoat; he had prominent eyes, with a straining, near-sighted look.