Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/172

 of wife for brother John. She was common and she didn't look clean.

They sat down in three chairs and made conversation. There were so many awkward silences that Edward could not keep track of them. His sister-in-law was dull and colorless and ill at ease. John tried to behave like the head of a house.

One gathered mostly that the cost of living was steadily mounting, that the doctor had advised Mrs. John to stop nursing her baby and that it was hard to get milk that agreed with him.

"I wouldn't want to live in Flushing at all," said Mrs. John, "if it wasn't for mommer. She was raised here. But I was raised in Westchester."

John, remembering how anxious she had been to get away from Westchester, was troubled. "But I wouldn't want to live in Westchester," said he.

"You wouldn't have to, only between voyages. I wouldn't think a sailor would care much where his family lived. He ain't hardly ever with them."

At this point there was a knocking on the front door. Mrs. John went so quickly and alertly to answer it that it almost seemed as if she had been expecting it. As she left the sitting room she closed the door. John looked at Edward in a helpless kind of way and then lowered his eyes.