And bang! The door would shut.
Evelyn would come back from house hunting exhausted and despairing. And she had felt so ill almost all the time since she knew she was going to have a child. Joe had never known whether he would come home in the evening to a brave, noble Evelyn, hiding the ache in her heart in a manner not to be ignored, or to a despairing Evelyn ready to burst into tears, pouring out her troubles in his arms. But now she felt well again, and happy because just she and Joe were together.
Faint on the warm wind she heard the church bells. She could almost see the little procession leaving 29 Chestnut Street—Hoagland in his golf clothes and diamond-patterned stockings, leading Aunt Sarah out to where Charlotte and Charlie the chauffeur waited in the closed car; Aunt Sarah bundled up in her cloth mantle, cold in spite of the warm sun, her head nodding, her lips moving, her old hands trembling in their nice kid gloves. Hoagland helping her patiently. "Take your time, Aunt Sarah. My goodness! you're spryer than any of us—you'd better come on out to the Club and have a game of golf with me." After them Carrie, fastening a sleeve, turning an ankle, dropping a prayer book and hymnal that showered the path with little cards and snips of palm and pressed lilies of the valley, pleased because she was going to church in an automobile. And last of all, Kate, in the hat trimmed with blue morning-glories that Joe had chosen
