THE SCOUT MASTER
387
enough to listen to Virginia Ann's chatter and to smile over it. She
shook her head and, using Virginia Ann's own language, she told me
that that sister of mine had a dandy line with her boyfriends.
And from thereout the cook didn't seem to be making such a
racket with the utensils she was cleaning. In a few minutes she reached
her brown hand through the grey, soapy water and opened the drain
of the sink. She stacked those dishes that she had not washed on the
draining board and said that they would just have to go till to–
morrow. Then she gathered her hat and her coat and umbrella and
asked me to lock the back door behind her. "I got to make haste,"
she said.
When I had locked the door I gave one glance to the dirty dishes
and began to move toward the dining room. But at the sound of the
voices of Virginia Ann and Bill Evers I stopped in the middle of the
kitchen floor. It hadn't occurred to me that those two did not leave
for the football game immediately after his arrival, and I was re–
strained from going into the front part of the house by a sudden
wave of timidity. I stood a moment studying the black and white
squares of linoleum about my feet. I observed now the bread crumbs
in one spot and the grease splotch in another. I saw on the long table
beneath the window a crockery bowl filled with water in which pieces
of cake batter floated. A large spoon lay beside it on the table, and
beneath the spoon a little puddle of water had settled on the white
oil cloth. I was so sensible of the general mess in which the cook
had left the kitchen and of the displeasure it would cause Mother
when we should come to the kitchen to fix sandwiches tonight that I
could not bear to think of being confined here any longer.
Yet I waited.
If
they didn't leave soon they'd certainly be late
for the game. It had not yet begun to rain, so there was no question
in my mind as to whether or not they would go. They would go, and
they would go soon. I had merely to wait.
I waited. Still there was only the sound of their voices. I listened
for the noise of footsteps. But there was none.
As
I waited with grow–
ing impatience I remarked how strange it was to hear a man's voice
that was not Father's and a woman's voice that was not Mother's
sounding on and on in our living room. Finally it seemed to be only
Bill Evers' voice that I heard. Whenever Virginia Ann did speak, her
voice had a sweetness about it that I had never heard and that almost
brought tears to my eyes.
After a while my impatience grew naturally into resentment. But
as the temptation to invade their privacy increased, so did my timidity.
I decided of a sudden that I was huqgry.
