“But I don't understand. If you care for him and he has asked you to marry him, why on earth are you crying your eyes out?”
“I do care. I don't know why I cried. It just came over me, all at once, that I--It was just foolishness. I am very happy, Aunt Harriet.”
Harriet thought she understood. The girl needed her mother, and she, Harriet, was a hard, middle-aged woman and a poor substitute. She patted Sidney's moist hand.
“I guess I understand,” she said. “I'll attend to your wedding things, Sidney. We'll show this street that even Christine Lorenz can be outdone.” And, as an afterthought: “I hope Max Wilson will settle down now. He's been none too steady.”
K. had taken Christine to see Tillie that Sunday afternoon. Palmer had the car out--had, indeed, not been home since the morning of the previous day. He played golf every Saturday afternoon and Sunday at the Country Club, and invariably spent the night there. So K. and Christine walked from the end of the trolley line, saying little, but under K.'s keen direction finding bright birds in the hedgerows, hidden field flowers, a dozen wonders of the country that Christine had never dreamed of.
The interview with Tillie had been a disappointment to K. Christine, with the best and kindliest intentions, struck a wrong note. In her endeavor to cover the fact that everything in Tillie's world was wrong, she fell into the error of pretending that everything was right.
Tillie, grotesque of figure and tragic-eyed, listened to her patiently, while K. stood, uneasy and uncomfortable, in the wide door of the hay-barn and watched automobiles turning in from the road. When Christine rose to leave, she confessed her failure frankly.
“I've meant well, Tillie,” she said. “I'm afraid I've said exactly what I shouldn't. I can only think that, no matter what is wrong, two wonderful pieces of luck have come to you. Your husband--that is, Mr. Schwitter--cares for you,--you admit that,--and you are going to have a child.”
“I used to be a good woman, Mrs. Howe,” she said simply. “Now I'm not. When I look in that glass at myself, and call myself what I am, I'd give a good bit to be back on the Street again.”
She found opportunity for a word with K. while Christine went ahead of him out of the barn.