Carrie's fur coat was flaring open and because of the quality of her
attire down there where the bilge waters of the city-tide flow and eddy,
stares followed her.
Once, to the stoppage of Alma's heart, she halted and said a brief word
to a truckman as he crossed the sidewalk with a bill of lading. He
hesitated, laughed and went on.
Then she quickened her pace and went on, but as if with sense of being
followed, because constantly as she walked, she jerked a step, to look
back, and then again, over her shoulder.
A second time she stopped, this time to address a little nub of a woman
without a hat and lugging one-sidedly a stack of men's basted
waistcoats, evidently for homework in some tenement. She looked and
muttered her un-understanding of whatever Carrie had to say and shambled
on.
Then Mrs. Latz spied her daughter, greeting her without surprise or any
particular recognition.
"Thought you could fool me! Heh, Louis? Alma."
"Mama, it's Alma. It's all right. Don't you remember, we had this
appointment? Come, dear."
"No, you don't! That's a man following. Shh-h-h-h, Louis. I was fooling.
I went up to him (snicker) and I said to him, 'Give you five dollars for
a doctor's certificate.' That's all I said to him, or any of them. He's
in a white carnation, Louis.
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