Chapter 8

VIII

Mr. Ramy, after a decent interval, returned to the shop; and Ann
Eliza, when they met, was unable to detect whether the emotions
which seethed under her black alpaca found an echo in his bosom.
Outwardly he made no sign. He lit his pipe as placidly as ever and
seemed to relapse without effort into the unruffled intimacy of
old. Yet to Ann Eliza's initiated eye a change became gradually
perceptible. She saw that he was beginning to look at her sister
as he had looked at her on that momentous afternoon: she even
discerned a secret significance in the turn of his talk with
Evelina. Once he asked her abruptly if she should like to travel,
and Ann Eliza saw that the flush on Evelina's cheek was reflected
from the same fire which had scorched her own.

So they drifted on through the sultry weeks of July. At that
season the business of the little shop almost ceased, and one
Saturday morning Mr. Ramy proposed that the sisters should lock up
early and go with him for a sail down the bay in one of the Coney
Island boats.

Ann Eliza saw the light in Evelina's eye and her resolve was
instantly taken.

"I guess I won't go, thank you kindly; but I'm sure my sister
will be happy to."

She was pained by the perfunctory phrase with which Evelina
urged her to accompany them; and still more by Mr. Ramy's silence.

"No, I guess I won't go," she repeated, rather in answer to
herself than to them. "It's dreadfully hot and I've got a kinder
headache."

"Oh, well, I wouldn't then," said her sister hurriedly.
"You'd better jest set here quietly and rest."

*** A summary of Part I of "Bunner Sisters" appears on page 4
of the advertising pages.

"Yes, I'll rest," Ann Eliza assented.

At two o'clock Mr. Ramy returned, and a moment later he and
Evelina left the shop. Evelina had made herself another new bonnet
for the occasion, a bonnet, Ann Eliza thought, almost too youthful
in shape and colour. It was the first time it had ever occurred to
her to criticize Evelina's taste, and she was frightened at the
insidious change in her attitude toward her sister.

When Ann Eliza, in later days, looked back on that afternoon
she felt that there had been something prophetic in the quality of
its solitude; it seemed to distill the triple essence of loneliness
in which all her after-life was to be lived. No purchasers came;
not a hand fell on the door-latch; and the tick of the clock in the
back room ironically emphasized the passing of the empty hours.

Evelina returned late and alone. Ann Eliza felt the coming
crisis in the sound of her footstep, which wavered along as if not
knowing on what it trod. The elder sister's affection had so
passionately