At Fault by Kate Chopin Page B

well pleased with themselves, with
their new attire and newer jewelry, would likely have answered
Hosmer's "beg pardon" with amiability if he had knocked them down. But
he had only thrust them rather violently to one side in his eagerness
to board the cable car that was dashing by, with no seeming
willingness to stay its mad flight. He still possessed the agility in
his unpracticed limbs to swing himself on the grip, where he took a
front seat, well buttoned up as to top-coat, and glad of the bodily
rest that his half hour's ride would bring him.
    The locality in which he descended presented some noticeable changes
since he had last been there. Formerly, it had been rather a quiet
street, with a leisurely horse car depositing its passengers two
blocks away to the north from it; awaking somewhat of afternoons when
hordes of children held possession. But now the cable had come to
disturb its long repose, adding in the office, nothing to its
attractiveness.
    There was the drug store still at the corner, with the same
proprietor, tilted back in his chair as of old, and as of old reading
his newspaper with only the change which a newly acquired pair of
spectacles gave to his appearance. The "drug store boy" had unfolded
into manhood, plainly indicated by the mustache that in adding
adornment and dignity to his person, had lifted him above the menial
office of window washing. A task relegated to a mustacheless urchin
with a leaning towards the surreptitious abstraction of caramels and
chewing gum in the intervals of such manual engagements as did not
require the co-operation of a strategic mind.
    Where formerly had been the vacant lot "across the street," the Sunday
afternoon elysium of the youthful base ball fiend from Biddle Street,
now stood a row of brand new pressed-brick "flats." Marvelous must
have been the architectural ingenuity which had contrived to unite so
many dwellings into so small a space. Before each spread a length of
closely clipped grass plot, and every miniature front door wore its
fantastic window furnishing; each set of decorations having seemingly
fired the next with efforts of surpassing elaboration.
    The house at which Hosmer rang—a plain two-storied red brick,
standing close to the street—was very old-fashioned in face of its
modern opposite neighbors, and the recently metamorphosed dwelling
next door, that with added porches and appendages to tax man's faculty
of conjecture, was no longer recognizable for what it had been. Even
the bell which he pulled was old-fashioned and its tingle might be
heard throughout the house long after the servant had opened the door,
if she were only reasonably alert to the summons. Its reverberations
were but dying away when Hosmer asked if Mrs. Larimore were in. Mrs.
Larimore was in; an admission which seemed to hold in reserve a
defiant "And what if she is, sir."
    Hosmer was relieved to find the little parlor into which he was
ushered, with its adjoining dining-room, much changed. The carpets
which he and Fanny had gone out together to buy during the early days
of their housekeeping, were replaced by rugs that lay upon the bare,
well polished floors. The wall paper was different; so were the
hangings. The furniture had been newly re-covered. Only the small
household gods were as of old: things—trifles—that had never much
occupied or impressed him, and that now, amid their altered
surroundings stirred no sentiment in him of either pleased or sad
remembrance.
    It had not been his wish to take his wife unawares, and he had
previously written her of his intended coming, yet without giving her
a clue for the reason of it.
    There was an element of the bull-dog in Hosmer. Having made up his
mind, he indulged in no regrets, in no nursing of if's and and's, but
stood like a brave soldier to his post, not a post of danger,
true—but one well supplied with discomfiting possibilities.
    And what had Homeyer said of it? He had railed of course as usual, at
the submission of a