"Grandmother," she whispered, "I shall not wait for the sermon."
A moment later she issued from the church doors and took her way
slowly homeward through the deserted streets, under the lonely blue
of the unanswering sky.
III
The Conyers homestead was situated in a quiet street on the
southern edge of the town. All the houses in that block had been
built by people of English descent near the close of the eighteenth
or at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Each was set apart
from each by lawns, yards and gardens, and further screened by
shrubs and vines in accordance with old English custom. Where they
grew had once been the heart of a wilderness; and above each house
stood a few old forest trees, indifferent guardsmen of the camping
generations.
The architects had given to the buildings good strong characters;
the family living in each for a hundred years or more had long
since imparted reputation. Out of the windows girlish brides had
looked on reddening springs and whitening winters until they had
become silver-haired grandmothers themselves; then had looked no
more; and succeeding eyes had watched the swift pageants of the
earth, and the swifter pageants of mortal hope and passion. Out of
the front doors, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons had gone away
to the cotton and sugar and rice plantations of the South, to new
farm lands of the West, to the professions in cities of the North.
The mirrors within held long vistas of wavering forms and vanishing
faces; against the walls of the rooms had beaten unremembered tides
of strong and of gentle voices.
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