When she was driving with Kennicott, in early
evening, she saw him on the lake shore, reading a thin book which might
easily have been poetry. She noted that he was the only person in the
motorized town who still took long walks.
She told herself that she was the daughter of a judge, the wife of a
doctor, and that she did not care to know a capering tailor. She told
herself that she was not responsive to men . . . not even to Percy
Bresnahan. She told herself that a woman of thirty who heeded a boy
of twenty-five was ridiculous. And on Friday, when she had convinced
herself that the errand was necessary, she went to Nat Hicks's shop,
bearing the not very romantic burden of a pair of her husband's
trousers. Hicks was in the back room. She faced the Greek god who, in a
somewhat ungodlike way, was stitching a coat on a scaley sewing-machine,
in a room of smutted plaster walls.
She saw that his hands were not in keeping with a Hellenic face. They
were thick, roughened with needle and hot iron and plow-handle. Even
in the shop he persisted in his finery.
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