for Louise because she had pitied Louise's frank envy.
"I don't want to work," said Louise, "but he wants me to. I don't see no sense in it, because we're going to be married soon and then I won't work."
"Who told you?" Billy asked.
"I know I won't work. I ain't going to work after we're married and that's settled. And we're going to be married next month."
"Why?" asked Lillian. "Why don't you wait a year yet?"
"Well, because I don't want to. You know how it is with Billy and me. Everybody knows how it is and I feel so cheap and common."
"Well, there you are," said Lillian, rising briskly and beginning to clear the table. "That's the way the world goes. Come on, Hubert, wake up. I'll have to go in and get that tray from Anna. Is that rain?"
She walked to the window and stood silent for many minutes, gazing out at the rain-swept court. A strange sense of loneliness had come suddenly upon her. She wished Hubert would awaken. She needed his booming voice to assure her of her importance and her security. Billy and Louise were strangers, hostile strangers at that moment. She knew that presently she would turn around and that there would be her living-room and all the beloved familiar objects and old Billy with his line of wisecracks and Louise who was well-meaning but thoughtless and above all else her friend.
She turned, but there was nobody there to assure her. Hubert still slept. Billy read his paper and Louise powdered her face and frowned critically at herself.
