r them all. But she could not shut out the thought of the
empty rooms upstairs at their house--Cyrus's old home--and the crowded
quarters at Harriett's. Yet of course this would be better than the
hotel; she was glad Harriett and Ted had been able to arrange it; she
hoped, for their sakes, that Cyrus would not, to emphasize his feeling,
insist upon staying downtown.

She walked several blocks without giving any thought to where she was
going. She was not thinking then of those familiar streets, of the times
she had walked them. She was getting away, trying, for a little while,
to escape from things she had no more power to bear. She could not have
stayed another minute in her old room.

A little ahead of her she saw a woman sitting in a market wagon, holding
the horse. She got the impression that the woman was selling vegetables.
She tried to notice, to be interested. She could see, as she came along
toward the wagon, that the vegetables looked nice and fresh. She and
Stuart had raised vegetables once; they had done various things after
what money they had was exhausted and, handicapped both by his lack of
ruggedness and by the shrinking from people which their position bred in
them, they had to do the best they could at making a living. And so she
noticed these vegetables, but it was not until she was close to her that
she saw the woman had relaxed her hold on the lines and was leaning
forward, peering at her. And when she came a little nearer this woman--a
thin, wiry little person whose features were sharp, leaned still further
forward and cried: "Why, how do you do? How d'do, Ruth!"

For a moment Ruth was too startled to make any reply. Then she only
stammered, "Why, how do you do?"

But the woman leaned over the side of the wagon. Ruth was trying her
best to think who she was; she knew that she had known her somewhere, in
some way, but that thin, eager little face was way back in the past, and
that she should be spoken to in this way--warm, natural--was itself too
astonishing, moving, to leave her clear-headed for casting back.

And then, just as she seemed about to say something, her face changed a
little. Ruth heard a gate click behind her and then a man, a stolid
farmer, he appeared, came up to the wagon. The woman kept nodding her
head, as if in continued greeting, but she had leaned back, as though
she had decided against what she had been about to say. Ruth, starting
on, still bewildered, stirred, nodded a