“Ho!–I know him,” said Mrs. Hochmuller with a laugh, her eyes still on the clock-maker. “Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, Ramy?”
Mr. Ramy, who was looking at his plate, said suddenly one word which the sisters could not understand; it sounded to Ann Eliza like “Shwike.”
Mrs. Hochmuller laughed again. “My, my,” she said, “wouldn’t you think he’d be ashamed to go and be sick and never dell me, me that nursed him troo dat awful fever?”
“Yes, I SHOULD,” said Evelina, with a spirited glance at Ramy; but he was looking at the sausages that Linda had just put on the table.
When dinner was over Mrs. Hochmuller invited her guests to step out of the kitchen-door, and they found themselves in a green enclosure, half garden, half orchard. Grey hens followed by golden broods clucked under the twisted apple-boughs, a cat dozed on the edge of an old well, and from tree to tree ran the network of clothes-line that denoted Mrs. Hochmuller’s calling. Beyond the apple trees stood a yellow summer-house festooned with scarlet runners; and below it, on the farther side of a rough fence, the land dipped down, holding a bit of woodland in its hollow. It was all strangely sweet and still on that hot Sunday afternoon, and as she moved across the grass under the apple-boughs Ann Eliza thought of quiet afternoons in church, and of the hymns her mother had sung to her when she was a baby.
Evelina was more restless. She wandered from the well to the summer-house and back, she tossed crumbs to the chickens and disturbed the cat with arch caresses; and at last she expressed a desire to go down into the wood.
“I guess you got to go round by the road, then,” said Mrs. Hochmuller. “My Linda she goes troo a hole in de fence, but I guess you’d tear your dress if you was to dry.”
“I’ll help you,” said Mr. Ramy; and guided by Linda the pair walked along the fence till they reached a narrow gap in its boards. Through this they disappeared, watched curiously in their descent by the grinning Linda, while Mrs. Hochmuller and Ann Eliza were left alone in the summer-house.
Mrs. Hochmuller looked at her guest with a confidential smile. “I guess dey’ll be gone quite a while,” she remarked, jerking her double chin toward the gap in the fence. “Folks like dat don’t never remember about de dime.” And she drew out her knitting.
Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say.
“Your sister she thinks a great lot of him, don’t she?” her hostess continued.
Ann Eliza’s cheeks grew hot. “Ain’t you a teeny bit lonesome away out here sometimes?” she asked. “I should think you’d be scared nights, all alone with your daughter.”
“Oh, no, I ain’t,” said Mrs. Hochmuller. “You see I take in washing–dat’s my business–and it’s a lot cheaper doing it out here dan in de city: where’d I get a drying-ground like dis in Hobucken? And den it’s safer for Linda too; it geeps her outer de streets.”
“Oh,” said Ann Eliza, shrinking. She began to feel a distinct aversion for her hostess, and her eyes turned with involuntary annoyance to the square-backed form of Linda, still inquisitively suspended on the fence. It seemed to Ann Eliza that Evelina and her companion would never return from the wood; but they came at length, Mr. Ramy’s brow pearled with perspiration, Evelina pink and conscious, a drooping bunch of ferns in her hand; and it was clear that, to her at least, the moments had been winged.
“D’you suppose they’ll revive?” she asked, holding up the ferns; but Ann Eliza, rising at her approach, said stiffly: “We’d better be getting home, Evelina.”
“Mercy me! Ain’t you going to take your coffee first?” Mrs. Hochmuller protested; and Ann Eliza found to her dismay that another long gastronomic ceremony must intervene before politeness permitted them to leave. At length, however, they found themselves again on the ferry-boat. Water and sky were grey, with a dividing gleam of sunset that sent sleek opal waves in the boat’s wake. The wind had a cool tarry breath, as though it had travelled over miles of shipping, and the hiss of the water about the paddles was as delicious as though it had been splashed into their tired faces.