Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/65

Rh pool, the cowardly woman hiding underneath a cross. Her fingers would feel the scarab.

The next morning, after a night of restless sleep, Reba started out for a walk. She could always think best when she was walking. The farther behind she left the unfriendly atmosphere of 89 Chestnut Street, the clearer her vision always became. It was somewhat the same with the town itself; not with lower Ridgefield—lower Ridgefield was Italy, and Greece and Sweden—but with the part of the town to which she was indigenous. She always wanted to get away from the frowning front-doors and gaping windows of Ridgefield proper. Her mother and aunts devoured passers-by, relishing most the ones they could disapprove of the most heartily. Reba always felt that she was being devoured in like manner when she walked by the houses of the people who had been cut up into morsels at 89 Chestnut Street.

Ridgefield was a typical New England town of some three or four thousand people. Running through its Main Street it had a double-track electric carline connecting it with the city of Union, eighteen miles away. Its Main Street was a typical New England Main Street—elm-shaded, bordered on each side by a gravel sidewalk, becoming brick when it passed the single brick business block on the left, and concrete with big cracks in it when it straggled up over the knoll in front of Masonic Hall. There was the usual collection of public buildings on Main Street, with the usual sprinkling of A-roofed dwelling-houses in between. There was the customary town-hall painted ginger-snap brown, the syndicate drugstore, glaringly up-to-date with plate-glass windows and modern yellow signs.