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PARTISAN REVIEW
tures in a house. I believed she had other decorative furnishings in the
back seat as, perhaps, a needlepoint footstool and a writing board.
What if she even had a tea table and at a suitable hour and place,
ordered the car to be stopped and then served herself tea! I would
dwell on thi<> enchanting thought sometimes as long as half an hour,
seeing with an overwhelming happiness the actual seeds of the straw–
berry jam.
Here came the car! Slipping round the comer of the Hotel, its
long black snout caught the rays of the sun which shot fitfully into
my eyes. It stopped and Mac, the chauffeur, stepped out. He was a
thin, sharp, silvery young man who, in
his
gray livery, looked like
an upright rat. He suffered from some strange distemper that caused
his feet to swell, but though the valetudinarians of the veranda per–
petually foretold Miss Pride's doom when the man while driving
should die at the wheel (for they were enough acquainted with
his
symptoms to know that foot swelling indicated a rheumatic heart for
which there was
no cure),
she kept him on and about twice a week
was handed into the car by his lean, gray paws which, since they
went out and withdrew so quickly, seemed to abhor their contact
with the dessicated elbow that they briefly cupped.
"Well, Mac," came her voice, "I trust we are
all
in order. I must
run in to Pinckney Street today."
So that was the name of it: Pinckney Street. I repeated the
words to myself and the house where she lived all winter now seemed
less strange because it was not merely in Boston but was in a specific
street with a specific number of houses. Henceforth my daydreams
would not begin with the vague condition, "When I live in Boston
with Miss Pride," but with, "When I live on Pinckney Street."
"Oh, but before we go," she said, her foot on the running board,
"I want you to take me to the shoemaker here. A Mr. Marburg."
The car drove off and I slipped into the chair at the writing
desk, faint with a conflict. For the joy I felt in Miss Pride's going to
call on my father was scotched by my shame of our shabby shop, iny
father's untidiness, and my mother's loquacity. Nor did I know
whether she was seeking him out as Mr. Brock did, because he was
educated, or if she was going to him on business, to have him half–
sole her Ground Grippers.
If
her intention were the latter, now, at
this very moment, I must relinquish my ambition to be her young
and well beloved friend.
The letter to her niece was gone from the writing desk and in its
place was one addressed to herself and postmarked London. I was
less moved by the foreign stamp and the strange, thin paper of the
