Bunner Sisters. Edith Wharton
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it; but this stiffness of outline gave it an air of sacerdotal state which seemed to emphasize the importance of the occasion.
Seen thus, in her sacramental black silk, a wisp of lace turned over the collar and fastened by a mosaic brooch, and her face smoothed into harmony with her apparel, Ann Eliza looked ten years younger than behind the counter, in the heat and burden of the day. It would have been as difficult to guess her approximate age as that of the black silk, for she had the same worn and glossy aspect as her dress; but a faint tinge of pink still lingered on her cheek-bones, like the reflection of sunset which sometimes colours the west long after the day is over.
When she had tied the parcel to her satisfaction, and laid it with furtive accuracy just opposite her sister's plate, she sat down, with an air of obviously-assumed indifference, in one of the rocking-chairs near the window; and a moment later the shop-door opened and Evelina entered.
The younger Bunner sister, who was a little taller than her elder, had a more pronounced nose, but a weaker slope of mouth and chin. She still permitted herself the frivolity of waving her pale hair, and its tight little ridges, stiff as the tresses of an Assyrian statue, were flattened under a dotted veil which ended at the tip of her cold-reddened nose. In her scant jacket and skirt of black cashmere she looked singularly nipped and faded; but it seemed possible that under happier conditions she might still warm into relative youth.
“Why, Ann Eliza,” she exclaimed, in a thin voice pitched to chronic fretfulness, “what in the world you got your best silk on for?”
Ann Eliza had risen with a blush that made her steel-browed spectacles incongruous.
“Why, Evelina, why shouldn't I, I sh'ld like to know? Ain't it your birthday, dear?” She put out her arms with the awkwardness of habitually repressed emotion.
Evelina, without seeming to notice the gesture, threw back the jacket from her narrow shoulders.
“Oh, pshaw,” she said, less peevishly. “I guess we'd better give up birthdays. Much as we can do to keep Christmas nowadays.”
“You hadn't oughter say that, Evelina. We ain't so badly off as all that. I guess you're cold and tired. Set down while I take the kettle off: it's right on the boil.”
She pushed Evelina toward the table, keeping a sideward eye on her sister's listless movements, while her own hands were busy with the kettle. A moment later came the exclamation for which she waited.
“Why, Ann Eliza!” Evelina stood transfixed by the sight of the parcel beside her plate.
Ann Eliza, tremulously engaged in filling the teapot, lifted a look of hypocritical surprise.
“Sakes, Evelina! What's the matter?”
The younger sister had rapidly untied the string, and drawn from its wrappings a round nickel clock of the kind to be bought for a dollar-seventy-five.
“Oh, Ann Eliza, how could you?” She set the clock down, and the sisters exchanged agitated glances across the table.
“Well,” the elder retorted, “Ain't it your birthday?”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, and ain't you had to run round the corner to the Square every morning, rain or shine, to see what time it was, ever since we had to sell mother's watch last July? Ain't you, Evelina?”
“Yes, but—”
“There ain't any buts. We've always wanted a clock and now we've got one: that's all there is about it. Ain't she a beauty, Evelina?” Ann Eliza, putting back the kettle on the stove, leaned over her sister's shoulder to pass an approving hand over the circular rim of the clock. “Hear how loud she ticks. I was afraid you'd hear her soon as you come in.”
“No. I wasn't thinking,” murmured Evelina.
“Well, ain't you glad now?” Ann Eliza gently reproached her. The rebuke had no acerbity, for she knew that Evelina's seeming indifference was alive with unexpressed scruples.
“I'm real glad, sister; but you hadn't oughter. We could have got on well enough without.”
“Evelina Bunner, just you sit down to your tea. I guess I know what I'd oughter and what I'd hadn't oughter just as well as you do—I'm old enough!”
“You're real good, Ann Eliza; but I know you've given up something you needed to get me this clock.”
“What do I need, I'd like to know? Ain't I got a best black silk?” the elder sister said with a laugh full of nervous pleasure.
She poured out Evelina's tea, adding some condensed milk from the jug, and cutting for her the largest slice of pie; then she drew up her own chair to the table.
The two women ate in silence for a few moments before Evelina began to speak again. “The clock is perfectly lovely and I don't say it ain't a comfort to have it; but I hate to think what it must have cost you.”
“No, it didn't, neither,” Ann Eliza retorted. “I got it dirt cheap, if you want to know. And I paid for it out of a little extra work I did the other night on the machine for Mrs. Hawkins.”
“The baby-waists?”
“Yes.”
“There, I knew it! You swore to me you'd buy a new pair of shoes with that money.”
“Well, and s'posin' I didn't want 'em—what then? I've patched up the old ones as good as new—and I do declare, Evelina Bunner, if you ask me another question you'll go and spoil all my pleasure.”
“Very well, I won't,” said the younger sister.
They continued to eat without farther words. Evelina yielded to her sister's entreaty that she should finish the pie, and poured out a second cup of tea, into which she put the last lump of sugar; and between them, on the table, the clock kept up its sociable tick.
“Where'd you get it, Ann Eliza?” asked Evelina, fascinated.
“Where'd you s'pose? Why, right round here, over acrost the Square, in the queerest little store you ever laid eyes on. I saw it in the window as I was passing, and I stepped right in and asked how much it was, and the store-keeper he was real pleasant about it. He was just the nicest man. I guess he's a German. I told him I couldn't give much, and he said, well, he knew what hard times was too. His name's Ramy—Herman Ramy: I saw it written up over the store. And he told me he used to work at Tiff'ny's, oh, for years, in the clock-department, and three years ago he took sick with some kinder fever, and lost his place, and when he got well they'd engaged somebody else and didn't want him, and so he started this little store by himself. I guess he's real smart, and he spoke quite like an educated man—but he looks sick.”
Evelina was listening with absorbed attention. In the narrow lives of the two sisters such an episode was not to be under-rated.
“What you say his name was?” she asked as Ann Eliza paused.
“Herman Ramy.”
“How old is he?”
“Well, I couldn't exactly tell you, he looked so sick—but I don't b'lieve he's much over forty.”
By this time the plates had been cleared and the teapot emptied, and the two sisters rose from the table. Ann Eliza, tying an apron over her black silk, carefully removed all traces of the meal; then, after washing the cups and plates, and putting them away in a cupboard, she drew her rocking-chair to the lamp and sat down to a heap of mending. Evelina, meanwhile, had been roaming about the room in search of an abiding-place for the clock. A rosewood what-not with ornamental fret-work hung on the wall beside the devout young lady in dishabille, and after much weighing of alternatives the sisters decided to dethrone a broken china vase filled with dried grasses which had long stood on the top shelf, and to put the clock in its place; the vase, after farther consideration, being relegated to a small table covered with blue and white beadwork, which held a Bible and prayer-book, and an