Chapter XIX

The very next day, which was Saturday, and consequently a holiday, Maria went on the trolley to Westbridge, which was a provincial city about six miles from Amity.  She proposed buying some clothing for Jessy Ramsey with the ten dollars which George Ramsey had given her.  Her aunt Eunice accompanied her.

“George Ramsey goes over to Westbridge on the trolley,” said Eunice, as they jolted along—­the cars were very well equipped, but the road was rough—­“and I shouldn’t wonder if he was on our car coming back.”

Maria colored quickly and looked out of the window.  The cars were constructed like those on steam railroads, with seats facing towards the front, and Maria’s aunt had insisted upon her sitting next to the window because the view was in a measure new to her.  She had not been over the road many times since she had come to Amity.  She stared out at the trimly kept country road, lined with cheap Queen Anne houses and the older type of New England cottages and square frame houses, and it all looked strange to her after the red soil and the lapse towards Southern ease and shiftlessness of New Jersey.  But nothing that she looked upon was as strange as the change in her own heart.  Maria, from being of an emotional nature, had many times considered herself as being in love, young as she was, but this was different.  When her aunt Eunice spoke of George Ramsey she felt a rigid shiver from head to foot.  It seemed to her that she could not see him nor speak to him, that she could not return to Amity on the same car.  She made no reply at first to her aunt’s remark, but finally she said, in a faint voice, that she supposed Mr. Ramsey came home after bank hours at three o’clock.

“He comes home a good deal later than that, as a general thing,” said Eunice.  “Oftener than not I see him get off the car at six o’clock.  I guess he stays and works after bank hours.  George Ramsey is a worker, if there ever was one.  He’s a real likely young man.”

Maria felt Eunice’s eyes upon her, and realized that she was thinking, as her aunt Maria had done, that George Ramsey would be a good match for her.  A sort of desperation seized upon her.

“I don’t know what you mean by likely,” Maria said, impertinently, in her shame and defiance.

“Don’t know what I mean by likely?”

“No, I don’t.  People in New Jersey don’t say likely.”

“Why, I mean he is a good young man, and likely to turn out well,” responded Eunice, rather helplessly.  She was a very gentle woman, and had all her life been more or less intimidated by her husband’s and sister-in-laws’ more strenuous natures; and, if the truth were told, she stood in a little awe of this blooming young niece, with her self-possession and clothes of the New York fashion.

“I don’t see why he is more likely, as you call it, than any other young man,” Maria returned, pitilessly.  “I should call him a very ordinary young man.”