Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/28

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the location of their house in the city. They lived in a grimy white house on Flower Street in Wallbridge, down near the Armory. The Armory district in Wallbridge was as lacking in distinction as the gallery transept in the Granite Congregational Church. Sheilah suffered whenever she passed Felix's house in nondescript Flower Street—suffered with a queer fierce feeling of protection for him. She suffered every Sunday whenever Mr. Spaulding, smiling benignly upon the important flock gathered immediately in front of him, raised his hand above their heads and invited them (ignoring the transepts completely) to join him in prayer. It made Sheilah want to be kinder, and kinder still, to Felix Nawn up there in his gallery seat.

He was always there, seated between his thin, quiet, mouselike father, and anything but thin, quiet, mouselike mother. You were always aware of Mrs. Nawn if you were under the same roof with her. She had a big unruly laugh, and a big unruly voice, and a big unruly figure, too. At various social functions at the church, at which coffee and salad and sandwiches had to be prepared in quantities, Mrs. Nawn was always very much in evidence, accomplishing more than all the other women on the committee put together, and to Sheilah's secret discomfort (Sheilah often waited on table at these functions) making more noise about it than all the