Laurie. Love. Children. Winnie had a terrible sense that she was losing some unknown thing which was precious and belonged to her but of which she was afraid. "His night drawers are too small. His grandmother'll have to make him some. There's some nice stuff at that store next to the bakery." They talked of shops. The atmosphere of the room seemed to lift with the lightness and sureness of their talk. They were safe and at rest among unchanging irrelevances. Women knew best the sureness of trifles. These were the things which did not change--which men could not change. * * * * * Late afternoon. There was no sun. Below the blank gray sky, the long blank street. Along the street a pair of sleek and ponderous black horses, with thick manes and shaggy fetlocks, plodded before a loaded dray. Their bodies rocked and swayed tensely with strain. Their huge feet clattered and strove against the asphalt. The hands of the driver, red, with full, knotted veins, hung loose between his knees, holding the slack reins. His body, in a khaki shirt, was hunched forward miserably. From his fat stupid face his eyes glanced dully under a bare thatch of neutral tinted hair. Only the horses, purposeful and immense in their obedience, seemed to understand. In the gutter a street-sweeper, mild and tired, pushed dry ocher-colored manure into heaps. Again and again he stooped and lifted the shovel and the manure fell into a cart. He wore ragged white gloves too large for him. He was patient, but his gaze roamed, vague with speculation. Servant of the horses that dirtied the street, he was less sure than they. At the corner house work was over for the day. The abandoned platforms of the painters dangled loosely on the long ropes. Through the smeared window-panes you saw empty rooms blank as the faces of idiot women waiting for love. Alice walked slowly home from work. She saw her own windows where the awnings did not stir. Drooping, they cast their scalloped outlines vaguely into the depths of the shadow-silvered glass. May was on the front step. "Hello, May." Aunt Alice's voice, very gruff. May sucked her finger and ducked her head sidewise, smiling. Her finger slipped out of her mouth with a plop. She put it back between her wet lips. "Coming in?" Aunt Alice held the door back. May went after her into the hall that was full of the smell of baking bread. Aunt Alice threw off her hat and walked, heavy-footed, into the living-room. May trailed after her in limp timidity. Winnie, in her lilac négligé, sat in an armchair. "Oh, Alice. I've been talking to the doctor again and he's so horrid. He says I should have been operated on right after Bobby was born and now I'm getting worse." Alice stood beside the chair and stared down. "Doctors like to croak." Winnie reached up and clutched Alice's square dark hand. Winnie's white fingers were little claws digging into Alice's swarthy flesh. "Say I don't have to! I can't, Alice! I can't!"