"You ought to have a longish coat," she says, "you're so tall."
Just then I saw a woman with gray hair, and I stood staring at her, wondering if there was anybody's mother that looked as grand as her.
"Cosma," Mis' Carney said, "look at the things, please. Never mind the people."
"Never mind the people." I knew then that they were all I cared about. It wasn't so much the folks shopping that I saw—it was the girls, the whole army of girls that was waiting on them. When you get to look at the shops that way, then you know more about them than you did before. But the folks on the sidewalks kind of got me too. Out in the car I says to Mis' Carney:
"I know! It ain't just school or clothes or you that makes me feel good. It's something else. It's because I ain't worrying over the rent!"
I saw the folks on the sidewalks, all hurrying and thinking. I knew them all now. Half of them were worrying just the way I had been, just the way Rose was, just the way all the girls did. I felt bad for them. I wanted to take them all off with me, to school or somewheres.
Then come the evening I'll never forget. Mis' Carney and I had dinner by ourselves in a little glass room just off the big dining-room; and afterward we went into the library. She was showing me some books, when a bell rung, somewheres off in the house, and a maid come with a card.
"Show him to the drawing-room," Mis' Carney said, and gave me a lot more books and left me. And then I heard his voice in the next room where she'd gone. I knew—the minute I heard him speak I knew. I dropped my books and run to the curtains and stood where I could see.
And Mr. Ember was standing by the table, with his face turned toward me, looking just like I'd seen him last, there in Twiney's pasture. One hand was resting on the table and the other was pushing his hair back from his forehead, two, three times, kind of as if he was tired. And when I see him, from my head to my feet I begun to tremble. I'd felt like that once or twice before—once when the team got scared and begun to back off the bridge.
"I'm in town for the rest of the winter," he was saying. "I've a few lectures to pull off—and a lot of proof to keep me busy. What have you been doing with yourself?"