Eight!  At eight Tessie had been standing outside Hatton’s house envying Angie and hating her.  So that explained the people, and the automobiles, and the excitement.  Tessie was not receiving the news with the dramatic reaction which its purveyors felt it deserved.  Tessie, turning from one to the other quietly, had said nothing.  She was pitying Angie.  Oh, the luxury of it!  Nap Ballou, coming in swiftly to still the unwonted commotion in work hours, found Tessie the only one quietly occupied in that chatter-filled room.  She was smiling as she worked.  Nap Ballou, bending over her on some pretence that deceived no one, spoke low-voiced in her ear.  But she veiled her eyes insolently and did not glance up.  She hummed contentedly all the morning at her tedious work.

She had promised Nap Ballou to go picnicking with him Sunday.  Down the river, boating, with supper on shore.  The small, still voice within her had said:  “Don’t go!  Don’t go!” But the harsh, high-pitched, reckless overtone said:  “Go on!  Have a good time.  Take all you can get.”

She would have to lie at home and she did it.  Some fabrication about the girls at the watch works did the trick.  Fried chicken, chocolate cake.  She packed them deftly and daintily.  High-heeled white kid shoes, flimsy blouse, rustling skirt.  Nap Ballou was waiting for her over in the city park.  She saw him before he espied her.  He was leaning against a tree idly, staring straight ahead with queer, lack-lustre eyes.  Silhouetted there against the tender green of the pretty square he looked very old, somehow, and different—­much older than he looked in his shop clothes, issuing orders.  Tessie noticed that he sagged where he should have stuck out, and protruded where he should have been flat.  There flashed across her mind a vividly clear picture of Chuck as she had last seen him:  brown, fit, high of chest, flat of stomach, slim of flank.

Ballou saw her.  He straightened and came toward her swiftly:  “Somebody looks mighty sweet this afternoon.”

Tessie plumped the heavy lunch box into his arms.  “When you get a line you like you stick to it, don’t you?”

* * * * *

Down at the boathouse even Tessie, who had confessed ignorance of boats and oars, knew that Ballou was fumbling clumsily.  He stooped to adjust the oars to the oarlocks.  His hat was off.  His hair looked very gray in the cruel spring sunshine.  He straightened and smiled up at her.

“Ready in a minute, sweetheart,” he said.  He took off his collar and turned in the neckband of his shirt.  His skin was very white.  Tessie felt a little shudder of disgust sweep over her, so that she stumbled a little as she stepped into the boat.

The river was very lovely.  Tessie trailed her fingers in the water and told herself that she was having a grand time.  She told Nap the same when he asked her.

“Having a good time, little beauty?” he said.  He was puffing a little with the unwonted exercise.  Alcohol-atrophied muscles do not take kindly to rowing.