Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/299



Few in Prouty denied that there were forty-eight hours in the day that began about six o'clock on Saturday night and lasted until the same hour Monday morning. If there had been some way of taking a mild anesthetic to have carried them through this period, many no doubt would have resorted to it, for oblivion was preferable to consciousness during a Sunday in Prouty.

It could not, strictly, be called a Day of Rest, because there was not sufficient business during the week to make any one tired enough to need it.

When the church bells tinkled, the Episcopalians bowed patronizingly to the Presbyterians, the Presbyterians condescendingly recognized the Methodists, the Methodists, by a slight inclination of the head, acknowledged the exist- ence of the Catholics. This done, the excitement of the day was over.

The footsteps of a chance pedestrian echoed in Main Street like some one walking in a tunnel. Children flat- tened their noses against the panes and looked out wist- fully upon a world that had no joy in it.

The gloom of financial depression hung over Prouty like a crepe veil. If Prouty spent Sunday waiting for Monday, it spent the rest of the week waiting for some- thing to happen. Prouty's attitude was one of half- hearted expectancy — like a shipwrecked sailor knowing himself outside the line of travel, yet unable to resist watching the horizon for succor.