K. had never known a married couple to take two rooms and go to the bride's
mother's for meals in order to keep a car. He looked faintly dazed. Also,
certain sophistries of his former world about a cheap chauffeur being
costly in the end rose in his mind and were carefully suppressed.
"You'll find a car a great comfort, I'm sure," he said politely.
Christine considered K. rather distinguished. She liked his graying hair
and steady eyes, and insisted on considering his shabbiness a pose. She was
conscious that she made a pretty picture in the French window, and preened
herself like a bright bird.
"You'll come out with us now and then, I hope."
"Thank you."
"Isn't it odd to think that we are going to be practically one family!"
"Odd, but very pleasant."
He caught the flash of Christine's smile, and smiled back. Christine was
glad she had decided to take the rooms, glad that K. lived there. This
thing of marriage being the end of all things was absurd. A married woman
should have men friends; they kept her up. She would take him to the
Country Club. The women would be mad to know him. How clean-cut his
profile was!
Across the Street, the Rosenfeld boy had stopped by Dr. Wilson's car, and
was eyeing it with the cool, appraising glance of the street boy whose sole
knowledge of machinery has been acquired from the clothes-washer at home.
Joe Drummond, eyes carefully ahead, went up the Street. Tillie, at Mrs.
McKee's, stood in the doorway and fanned herself with her apron. Max
Wilson came out of the house and got into his car. For a minute, perhaps,
all the actors, save Carlotta and Dr. Ed, were on the stage. It was that
bete noir of the playwright, an ensemble; K. Le Moyne and Sidney, Palmer
Howe, Christine, Tillie, the younger Wilson, Joe, even young Rosenfeld, all
within speaking distance, almost touching distance, gathered within and
about the little house on a side street which K. at first grimly and now
tenderly called "home."