And this afternoon he was coming to pick them all up at five o’clock and Jane and Isabel must be ready at the window, for Flora’s father never liked to be kept waiting, holding his pawing horses, at anyone’s door. Jane assured Muriel earnestly that she would be on the front steps. Of course she would. She didn’t even want to miss seeing the coach swing around the corner, clattering and jingling and tooting—the Furnesses’ new coach—to pick her up to drive all the way down to Jackson Park with André, to show him the World’s Fair.
At four o’clock Jane began very seriously dressing for the party. She solemnly considered the possibility of borrowing Isabel’s curling tongs, but the sight of her sister, standing nervously in petticoat and combing jacket, heating the tongs in question for her own use at the gas jet beside her rosewood bureau, dissuaded her from the thought. Isabel didn’t like to be bothered when she was dressing.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk to me,” she said irritably, when her mother came in, conversationally minded, and sat sociably down on the sofa. Mrs. Ward rose obediently and almost ran into Jane at the door. They walked together down the hall. All the family had learned it was better never to disturb Isabel. But her voice floated out to them, down the passage.
“Shall I wear the blue or the green?” she called abstractedly. Jane’s mother turned back, with interest.
“The green, I think, dear.”
Jane went into her own bedroom. She wouldn’t borrow the curling tongs. She would rough up her hair by running her comb through it the wrong way. That, after all, would be safer. Jane had never used curling tongs. It would be better not to experiment for such an important party.
At a quarter to five Jane came out of her front door and looked anxiously up the street. It was perfectly empty, save for one yellow ice-wagon that was waiting, halfway down the block. The big white horses stood patiently, their noses in feedbags. Their flanks were just a little yellow, as if the paint from the wagon had run into them. The iceman was a long time delivering the ice. Jane knew him well. He was a friend of Minnie’s.
Jane sat down on the top step, carefully turning up the skirt of her blue foulard frock so that she wouldn’t soil it. The mellow afternoon sunlight slanted down the quiet street. The grass plots looked yellow-green behind their iron palings. The elm trees were just a little brown and rusty with the decline of summer, but they still hung plume-like and ponderous, almost meeting over the cedar block pavement. The big red brick and brown stone houses stood tranquilly in their wide yards. Down at the corner was a grey brick block of five high-stooped residences. Jane’s mother had thought it was dreadful when they were built, five years before.
“Eyesores!” she had said. She declared they spoiled the street. She thought it would be horrible to live in them and share a party wall with a neighbor. “Dark as a pocket,” was her phrase. Jane’s father had advanced the theory that, with the rise of real estate values, they’d live to see the yards built up all around them.
“You might as well say,” Jane’s mother had said incredulously, “that we’ll all be living in flats before we die—one on top of the other like sardines in a box.”
They had all laughed at that. Jane didn’t know anyone who lived in a flat except André.
The iceman came out of the house down the street, suggestively wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He hung up the ice tongs at the back of the wagon, then stepped around to take off the horses’ nosebags and climbed up over the wheel to the driver’s seat.
“Gittap!” he said. His voice echoed down the quiet block. The horses lumbered awkwardly into motion. Jane waved at him as he went by.
Suddenly the coach swung around the corner, a warning fanfare sounding on the horn.
“Isabel!” screamed Jane. It seemed terribly important not to keep Mr. Furness waiting a single second. Isabel appeared at the door. She looked very blond and pretty in her bright green dress. She had borrowed their mother’s black silk cape. She shaded her eyes against the western sun and waved cheerfully to Rosalie as the coach drew up at the door.
The groom sprang down with incredible alacrity and took up his position at the bridle of the prancing roan leaders. The horses arched their pretty necks and pawed the cedar pavement. The chain harness jingled and the smart red rosettes on their bridles fluttered with their restless motion. Jane and Isabel ran down the steps.
The coach was a chaos of festive colour and movement. Mrs. Lester had her purple parasol and Muriel her bright red frock and Flora her pale blue one. Rosalie looked lovely in rose-coloured taffeta, sitting with Mr. Furness on the box seat, but leaning back to talk to Freddy Waters, on the row behind her. Jane realized with relief that Edith had not come. But Bob and Teddy were there, and Robin Bridges for Isabel. André was on the back seat, close by the little platform where the groom stood up to blow the horn. Jane scrambled up over the back wheel to sit beside him, while Robin was helping Isabel up the little steps.
“Where’s Jane?” said Mrs. Lester, bewildered.
“I’m here!” piped Jane, brushing the dust off her flounces.
Mr. Furness waved his whip and flicked it over the shoulders of the leaders. The little groom sprang back, under peril of instant dissolution. The horses plunged and started. The groom climbed up behind Jane and André. In a minute they were trotting smartly down
