When they reached the yard between the houses Andrew cast an apprehensive glance at the windows. "Has she gone?" he asked.
"She hadn't when I came out. I saw you come past the house, and I thought you walked as if you didn't feel well, so I thought I would run out and see."
"I was all right," replied Andrew. "Have you got to try on anything more to-night?"
"Well, then, let's run into grandma's a minute."
Mrs. Zelotes was sitting at her front window in the dusk, looking out on the street, as was her favorite custom. The old woman seldom lit a lamp in the summer evening, but sat there staring out at the lighted street and the people passing and repassing, with her mind as absolutely passive as regarded herself as if she were travelling and observing only that which passed without. At those times she became in a fashion sensible of the motion of the world, and lost her sense of individuality in the midst of it. When her son and granddaughter entered she looked away from the window with the expression of one returning from afar, and seemed dazed for a moment.
The room was dusky, and they moved across between the chairs and tables like two shadows.
"Oh, is it you, Andrew?" said his mother. "Who is that with you--Ellen?"
"Yes," said Ellen. "How do you do, grandma?"
Mrs. Zelotes became suddenly fully awake to the situation; she collected her scattered faculties; her keen old eyes gleamed in a shaft of electric-light from the street without, which fell full upon her face.
"Set down," said she. "Has the dressmaker gone?"
"No, she hadn't when I came out," replied Ellen, "but she's most through for to-night."
"Sometimes I think you'd better have had Miss Patch. I hope she 'ain't got your sleeves too tight at the elbows."
"Sleeves are very particular things; a sleeve wrong can spoil a whole dress."
Suddenly the old woman turned on Ellen with a look of extremest facetiousness and intelligence, and the girl winced, for she knew what was coming. "I see you goin' past with a young man last night, didn't I?" said she.
Ellen flushed. "Yes," she said, almost indignantly, for she had a feeling as if the veil of some inner sacredness of her nature were continually being torn aside. "I went over to Miss Lennox, to carry some sweet-peas, and Mr. Robert Lloyd was there, and he came home with me."