A strange impulse seemed drawing
her up town, and the machine seemed to run slow, slow, before it would
stitch the endless number of jean belts. Her fingers trembled with
nervous haste as she pinned up the unwieldy black bundle of the finished
work, and her feet fairly tripped over each other in their eagerness to
get to Claiborne Street, where she could board the up-town car. There
was a feverish desire to go somewhere, a sense of elation,--foolish
happiness that brought a faint echo of color into her pinched cheeks.
She wondered why.
No one noticed her in the car. Passengers on the Claiborne line are too
much accustomed to frail, little black-robed women with big, black
bundles; it is one of the city's most pitiful sights. She leaned her
head out of the window to catch a glimpse of the oleanders on Bayou
Road, when her attention was caught by a conversation in the car.
"Yes, it's too bad for Neale, and lately married too," said the elder
man, "I can't see what he is to do."
Neale! she pricked up her ears. That was the name of the groom in the
Jesuit church.
"How did it happen?" languidly inquired the younger. He was a stranger,
evidently; a stranger with a high regard for the faultlessness of male
attire, too.
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