Edith Wharton

Bunner Sisters Edith Wharton

han her younger sister could divine. In the first place, there had been the demoralizing satisfactionof finding herself in possession of a sum of money which she need not put into the common fund, but could spend as she chose, without consulting Evelina, and then the excitement of her stealthytrips abroad, undertaken on the rare occasions when she could trump up a pretext for leaving theshop; since, as a rule, it was Evelina who took the bundles to the dyer's, and delivered the purchasesof those among their customers who were too genteel to be seen carrying home a bonnet or abundle of pinking-so that, had it not been for the excuse of having to see Mrs. Hawkins's teethingbaby, Ann Eliza would hardly have known what motive to allege for deserting her usual seat behindthe counter. The infrequency of her walks made them the chief events of her life. The mere act of going outfrom the monastic quiet of the shop into the tumult of the streets filled her with a subduedexcitement which grew too intense for pleasure as she was swallowed by the engulfing roar ofBroadway or Third Avenue, and began to do timid battle with their incessant cross-currents ofhumanity. After a glance or two into the great show-windows she usually allowed herself to be sweptback into the shelter of a side-street, and finally regained her own roof in a state of breathlessbewilderment and fatigue; but gradually, as her nerves were soothed by the familiar quiet of the littleshop, and the click of Evelina's pinking-machine, certain sights and sounds would detach themselvesfrom the torrent along which she had been swept, and she would devote the rest of the day to amental reconstruction of the different episodes of her walk, till finally it took shape in her thought asa consecutive and highly-coloured experience, from which, for weeks afterwards, she would detachsome fragmentary recollection in the course of her long dialogues with her sister