Her mother's eyes,
following the slim figure, had a sort of grudging love in them. A spare,
caustic, wiry little woman, Tessie's mother. Tessie resembled her as a
water colour may resemble a blurred charcoal sketch. Tessie's wide mouth
curved into humour lines. She was the cut-up of the escapement
department at the watch factory; the older woman's lips sagged at the
corners. Tessie was buoyant and colourful with youth. The other was
shrunken and faded with years and labour. As the girl minced across the
room in her absurdly high-heeled white kid shoes the older woman
thought: "My, but she's pretty!" But she said aloud: "Them shoes could
stand a cleaning. I should think you'd stay home once in a while and not
be runnin' the streets every night."

"Time enough to be sittin' home when I'm old like you."

And yet between these two there was love, and even understanding. But in
families such as Tessie's demonstration is a thing to be ashamed of;
affection a thing to conceal. Tessie's father was janitor of the
Chippewa High School. A powerful man, slightly crippled by rheumatism,
loquacious, lively, fond of his family, proud of his neat gray frame
house, and his new cement sidewalk, and his carefully tended yard and
garden patch. In all her life Tessie had never seen a caress exchanged
between her parents.

Nowadays Ma Golden had little occasion for finding fault with Tessie's
evening diversion. She no longer had cause to say: "Always gaddin'
downtown, or over to Cora's or somewhere, like you didn't have a home to
stay in. You ain't been in a evening this week, 'cept when you washed
your hair."

Tessie had developed a fondness for sunsets viewed from the back
porch--she who had thought nothing of dancing until three and rising at
half-past six to go to work.

Stepping about in the kitchen after supper, her mother would eye the
limp, relaxed figure on the back porch with a little pang at her heart.
She would come to the screen door, or even out to the porch on some
errand or other--to empty the coffee grounds; to turn the row of
half-ripe tomatoes reddening on the porch railing; to flap and hang up a
damp tea towel.

"Ain't you goin' out, Tess?"

"No."

"What you want to lop around here for? Such a grand evening. Why don't
you put on your things and run downtown, or over to Cora's or somewhere,
h'm?"

"What for?"--listlessly.

"What for! What does anybody go out for!"

"I don't know."

If they could have talk