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Billy was sturdily dashing about selling popcorn balls, and Jim was staggering to and fro flirting with admiring Sodality girls. The young Hawkeses were at their handsome best, and women on all sides were congratulating Sally.
Lydia alone, walking between them, was actuated by cool motives of duty and convention and sighed as she thought of the heat and hubbub of the Hawkes's house, and the hour that must elapse before they were back in the cool night again. The Hawkeses had always lived in one house in Monroe.
And I thought Pa and Ma's way is no good, our house never seems to have much happiness in it and I'm going to get OUT! There never was a place like this for good times, and babies, and jokes, and company to dinner!" smiled Sally, looking about the Hawkeses' parlour triumphantly. But then Sally was born devoid of a social sense, mused Martie, walking home.
Kelly was Joe Hawkes's grandmother. "Well, I wish you would, girls," their mother said in her gentle, complaining voice. "She's a dear old lady a perfect saint about getting to church in all weathers! And while Pa doesn't care much about having you so intimate with the Hawkeses, he was saying this morning that Grandma Kelly is different.
'And you must have these apples won't you? We had brought in our basket two or three of those splendid apples for which Bartram was famous. I hesitated to go near her, these Hawkeses, Beauty and Pegtop, were such savages. So I rolled the apples gently along the ground to her feet.
Walking home under a jaded moon, yawning and cold in the revulsion from hours of excitement and the change from the heated rooms to the cold night air, Lydia was complacently superior; they were certainly warm-hearted, hospitable people, the Hawkeses, and she was glad that they, the Monroes, had paid Grandma the compliment of going. Sally, hanging on Lydia's arm, was silent.
"But you know as well as I do how my father feels toward the village people in Monroe, and while the Hawkeses are just as nice as they can be in their way " again Sally's flow of eloquence was strangely shaken; she felt as a child might, caught up in the arm of a much larger person and rushed along helplessly with only an occasional heartening touch of her feet to the ground "after all, that isn't quite our way, is it?" she asked.
Sally, after exchanging a conscious undertone with young Joe, slipped through the dining-room door with him, and happily joined the working forces in the kitchen. In her mind Sally knew that the Hawkeses were but homely folk; she knew that any Monroe should shrink from this hot and noisy kitchen.
"Jobs in a furniture store, eh, John?" Martie smiled. The man answered her smile sturdily. "It isn't so rotten!" he said. Her letters to-night, for there were two in the special delivery stamped envelope, were from Lydia and Sally. Sally had written often to her sister during the years, and Martie was fairly in touch with Monroe events: the young Hawkeses had three babies now, and Grace had twins.
Ben smiled at his velvet wallflowers. Surprisingly, Joe Hawkes was another ally. He came back in May, penniless, but full of honours, and with his position in the new hospital secure. A small, second-hand car, packed with Hawkeses of all ages, began to be seen in Monroe streets, and Sally grew rosier and fatter and more childish-looking every day.
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