Judith felt sorry for the woman. To some extent she could understand her point of view. It was as if sister Lizzie May, with all her finnicky little housewifely instincts, had fallen to be the wife of a wandering horse trader. She herself thought the life would be a jolly one, if one had no babies.
She turned away with a word of good-by and went on into Main Street, where she made delightful explorations in the dry-goods stores. Here in the dim coolness that smelt alluringly of new cotton goods, she wandered around with other back country women, fingering this and admiring that and looking lingeringly at the things that she was not able to buy.
Most of these women were stolid-faced, ungainly, flat-footed creatures, even the young ones wearing a heavy, settled expression, as though they realized in a dim way that life held nothing further in store for them. Some carried babies on their hips or had older children peeping shyly from behind their skirts, overawed by the strange surroundings. They looked at and fingered the pretty voiles, ginghams, and summer silks, then bought unbleached muslin, dress lengths of calico and spools of white cotton thread.
Judith bought some bright calico for dresses for the baby, and a piece of embroidered white muslin to make him a bonnet and a Sunday dress. Then, not being able to resist a certain pretty flowered muslin gay with pink rosebuds, she bought enough of it to make a dress for herself.
As she was loitering along Main Street looking into the shop windows, Bob Crupper came up from behind and looked at her admiringly with his boyish eyes.
"Hey, Judy, what you a-doin' here in the big taown?"
"Same thing you're a-doin', I reckon: a-loafin' an' a-idlin' an' a-spendin' what little money I got."
"Yaas, I expect that's about what we're all a-doin'," said Bob, and walked along beside her.
Now and then they saw in the crowd the familiar face of some one from their neighborhood; and Judith was conscious each time of a certain constraint in the look and greeting of these people, which would not have been there if she had been alone. Since her marriage she had begun to learn that a married woman cannot appear in the company of any man other than her husband without "making talk." She looked at the people she knew, from under her heavy eyebrows, with a challenging boldness that was half amusement, half irritation.