ver screeched or fainted or anything. She stood
there, kind of quiet, looking straight ahead, and then all of a sudden
she ran to her pa----"

"I feel sorry for her. She never did anything to me. She----"

Tessie spoke, her voice penetrating the staccato fragments all about
her and gathering them into a whole. "Say, who's the heroine of this
picture? I come in in the middle of the film, I guess."

They turned on her with the unlovely eagerness of those who have ugly
news to tell. They all spoke at once, in short sentences, their voices
high with the note of hysteria.

"Angie Hatton's beau was killed----"

"They say his airyoplane fell ten thousand feet----"

"The news come only last evening about eight----"

"She won't see nobody but her pa----"

Eight! At eight Tessie had been standing outside Hatton's house,
envying Angie and hating her. So that explained the people, and the
automobiles, and the excitement. Tessie was not receiving the news
with the dramatic reaction which its purveyors felt it deserved.
Tessie, turning from one to the other quietly, had said nothing. She
was pitying Angie. Oh, the luxury of it! Nap Ballou, coming in
swiftly to still the unwonted commotion in work hours, found Tessie the
only one quietly occupied in that chatter-filled room. She was smiling
as she worked. Nap Ballou, bending over her on some pretense that
deceived no one, spoke low-voiced in her ear. But she veiled her eyes
insolently and did not glance up. She hummed contentedly all the
morning at her tedious work.

She had promised Nap Ballou to go picknicking with him Sunday. Down the
river, boating, with supper on shore. The small, still voice within
her had said, "Don't go! Don't go!" But the harsh, high-pitched,
reckless overtone said, "Go on! Have a good time. Take all you can
get."

She would have to lie at home and she did it. Some fabrication about
the girls at the watchworks did the trick. Fried chicken, chocolate
cake. She packed them deftly and daintily. High-heeled shoes, flimsy
blouse, rustling skirt. Nap Ballou was waiting for her over in the
city park. She saw him before he espied her. He was leaning against a
tree, idly, staring straight ahead with queer, lackluster eyes.
Silhouetted there against the tender green of the pretty square, he
looked very old, somehow, and different--much older than he looked in
his shop clothes, issuing orders. Tessie noticed that he sagged where