That night, after supper, Tessie put on her hat and strolled down to Park Avenue.  It wasn’t for the walk.  Tessie had never been told to exercise systematically for her body’s good, or her mind’s.  She went in a spirit of unwholesome, brooding curiosity and a bitter resentment.  Going to France, was she?  Lots of good she’d do there.  Better stay home and—­and what?  Tessie cast about in her mind for a fitting job for Angie.  Guess she might’s well go, after all.  Nobody’d miss her, unless it was her father, and he didn’t see her but about a third of the time.  But in Tessie’s heart was a great envy for this girl who could bridge the hideous waste of ocean that separated her from her man.  Bleedin’ France.  Yeh!  Joke!

The Hatton place, built and landscaped twenty years before, occupied a square block in solitary grandeur, the show place of Chippewa.  In architectural style it was an impartial mixture of Norman castle, French chateau, and Rhenish Schloss, with a dash of Coney Island about its facade.  It represented Old Man Hatton’s realized dream of landed magnificence.

Tessie, walking slowly past it, and peering through the high iron fence, could not help noting an air of unwonted excitement about the place, usually so aloof, so coldly serene.  Automobiles standing out in front.  People going up and down.  They didn’t look very cheerful.  Just as if it mattered whether anything happened to her or not!

Tessie walked around the block and stood a moment, uncertainly.  Then she struck off down Grand Avenue and past Donovan’s pool shack.  A little group of after-supper idlers stood outside, smoking and gossiping, as she knew there would be.  As she turned the corner she saw Nap Ballou among them.  She had known that, too.  As she passed she looked straight ahead, without bowing.  But just past the Burke House he caught up to her.  No half-shy “Can I walk home with you?” from Nap Ballou.  No.  Instead:  “Hello, sweetheart!”

“Hello, yourself.”

“Somebody’s looking mighty pretty this evening, all dolled up in pink.”

“Think so?”

She tried to be pertly indifferent, but it was good to have someone following, someone walking home with you.  What if he was old enough to be her father, with graying hair?  Lots of the movie heroes had graying hair at the sides.  Twenty craves someone to tell it how wonderful it is.  And Nap Ballou told her.

They walked for an hour.  Tessie left him at the corner.  She had once heard her father designate Ballou as “that drunken skunk.”  When she entered the sitting room her cheeks held an unwonted pink.  Her eyes were brighter than they had been in months.  Her mother looked up quickly, peering at her over a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, very much askew.

“Where you been, Tessie?”

“Oh, walkin’.”

“Who with?”

“Cora.”

“Why, she was here, callin’ for you, not more’n an hour ago.”