Bunner Sisters | Page 4

drawn down, the counters cleared and the wares in the window lightly
covered with an old sheet; but the shop-door remained unlocked till
Evelina, who had taken a parcel to the dyer's, should come back.
In the back room a kettle bubbled on the stove, and Ann Eliza had laid
a cloth over one end of the centre table, and placed near the
green-shaded sewing lamp two tea-cups, two plates, a sugar-bowl and a
piece of pie. The rest of the room remained in a greenish shadow which
discreetly veiled the outline of an old-fashioned mahogany bedstead
surmounted by a chromo of a young lady in a night-gown who clung
with eloquently-rolling eyes to a crag described in illuminated letters as
the Rock of Ages; and against the unshaded windows two
rocking-chairs and a sewing-machine were silhouetted on the dusk.
Ann Eliza, her small and habitually anxious face smoothed to unusual
serenity, and the streaks of pale hair on her veined temples shining
glossily beneath the lamp, had seated herself at the table, and was tying
up, with her usual fumbling deliberation, a knobby object wrapped in
paper. Now and then, as she struggled with the string, which was too
short, she fancied she heard the click of the shop-door, and paused to
listen for her sister; then, as no one came, she straightened her
spectacles and entered into renewed conflict with the parcel. In honour
of some event of obvious importance, she had put on her double-dyed
and triple- turned black silk. Age, while bestowing on this garment a
patine worthy of a Renaissance bronze, had deprived it of whatever
curves the wearer's pre-Raphaelite figure had once been able to impress
on it; but this stiffness of outline gave it an air of sacerdotal state which

seemed to emphasize the importance of the occasion.
Seen thus, in her sacramental black silk, a wisp of lace turned over the
collar and fastened by a mosaic brooch, and her face smoothed into
harmony with her apparel, Ann Eliza looked ten years younger than
behind the counter, in the heat and burden of the day. It would have
been as difficult to guess her approximate age as that of the black silk,
for she had the same worn and glossy aspect as her dress; but a faint
tinge of pink still lingered on her cheek-bones, like the reflection of
sunset which sometimes colours the west long after the day is over.
When she had tied the parcel to her satisfaction, and laid it with furtive
accuracy just opposite her sister's plate, she sat down, with an air of
obviously-assumed indifference, in one of the rocking-chairs near the
window; and a moment later the shop-door opened and Evelina entered.
The younger Bunner sister, who was a little taller than her elder, had a
more pronounced nose, but a weaker slope of mouth and chin. She still
permitted herself the frivolity of waving her pale hair, and its tight little
ridges, stiff as the tresses of an Assyrian statue, were flattened under a
dotted veil which ended at the tip of her cold-reddened nose. In her
scant jacket and skirt of black cashmere she looked singularly nipped
and faded; but it seemed possible that under happier conditions she
might still warm into relative youth.
"Why, Ann Eliza," she exclaimed, in a thin voice pitched to chronic
fretfulness, "what in the world you got your best silk on for?"
Ann Eliza had risen with a blush that made her steel-browed spectacles
incongruous.
"Why, Evelina, why shouldn't I, I sh'ld like to know? Ain't it your
birthday, dear?" She put out her arms with the awkwardness of
habitually repressed emotion.
Evelina, without seeming to notice the gesture, threw back the jacket
from her narrow shoulders.

"Oh, pshaw," she said, less peevishly. "I guess we'd better give up
birthdays. Much as we can do to keep Christmas nowadays."
"You hadn't oughter say that, Evelina. We ain't so badly off as all that. I
guess you're cold and tired. Set down while I take the kettle off: it's
right on the boil."
She pushed Evelina toward the table, keeping a sideward eye on her
sister's listless movements, while her own hands were busy with the
kettle. A moment later came the exclamation for which she waited.
"Why, Ann Eliza!" Evelina stood transfixed by the sight of the parcel
beside her plate.
Ann Eliza, tremulously engaged in filling the teapot, lifted a look of
hypocritical surprise.
"Sakes, Evelina! What's the matter?"
The younger sister had rapidly untied the string, and drawn from its
wrappings a round nickel clock of the kind to be bought for a
dollar-seventy-five.
"Oh, Ann Eliza, how could you?" She set the clock down, and the
sisters exchanged agitated glances across the table.
"Well," the elder retorted,