Chapter 13

XIII

Spring had really come at last. There were leaves on the
ailanthus-tree that Evelina could see from her bed, gentle clouds
floated over it in the blue, and now and then the cry of a flower-
seller sounded from the street.

One day there was a shy knock on the back-room door, and
Johnny Hawkins came in with two yellow jonquils in his fist. He
was getting bigger and squarer, and his round freckled face was
growing into a smaller copy of his father's. He walked up to
Evelina and held out the flowers.

"They blew off the cart and the fellow said I could keep 'em.
But you can have 'em," he announced.

Ann Eliza rose from her seat at the sewing-machine and tried
to take the flowers from him.

"They ain't for you; they're for her," he sturdily objected;
and Evelina held out her hand for the jonquils.

After Johnny had gone she lay and looked at them without
speaking. Ann Eliza, who had gone back to the machine, bent her
head over the seam she was stitching; the click, click, click of
the machine sounded in her ear like the tick of Ramy's clock, and
it seemed to her that life had gone backward, and that Evelina,
radiant and foolish, had just come into the room with the yellow
flowers in her hand.

When at last she ventured to look up, she saw that her
sister's head had drooped against the pillow, and that she was
sleeping quietly. Her relaxed hand still held the jonquils, but it
was evident that they had awakened no memories; she had dozed off
almost as soon as Johnny had given them to her. The discovery gave
Ann Eliza a startled sense of the ruins that must be piled upon her
past. "I don't believe I could have forgotten that day, though,"
she said to herself. But she was glad that Evelina had forgotten.

Evelina's disease moved on along the usual course, now lifting
her on a brief wave of elation, now sinking her to new depths of
weakness. There was little to be done, and the doctor came only at
lengthening intervals. On his way out he always repeated his first
friendly suggestion about sending Evelina to the hospital; and Ann
Eliza always answered: "I guess we can manage."

The hours passed for her with the fierce rapidity that great
joy or anguish lends them. She went through the days with a
sternly smiling precision, but she hardly knew what was happening,
and when night-fall released her from the shop, and she could carry
her work to Evelina's bedside, the same sense of unreality
accompanied her, and she still seemed to be accomplishing a task
whose object had escaped her memory.

Once, when Evelina felt better, she expressed a desire to make
some artificial flowers, and Ann Eliza, deluded by this awakening
interest, got out the