All the time she was going to get the papers and getting them, looking at the dates to be sure she had the right ones, and bringing them down to the kitchen, she was thinking how thoughtless Hubert was to bring up the subject of a funeral and not remember that this was the anniversary of her father’s death. But she was interested herself and she stole a look at the papers while she was carrying them down and it was John Patrick Kinsella, it was his funeral Hubert had seen.

Rose left Hubert to read the full account of Mr. Kinsella’s life and circumstances, which he had read earlier with less attention, because it had been in yesterday morning’s news, and she herself looked idly through the back pages of the old Sunday paper, and found several items that she had missed on her first reading. When she remarked on this to Hubert, he observed that she had never learned to read properly, that she was a careless reader who skipped too often and did not concentrate on what she was reading, and it was a pity, because it was hard to form a good habit when you were older, and just as hard to break a bad habit once it had taken hold of you.

A Free Choice

__________

ROSE STOOD WAITING for the dance, a waltz, to end. She felt ill at ease, being stranded like this without a partner. She wondered why Hubert Derdon had not come in search of her, to ask her for a dance or to ask her if she would like to go into the dining room and find something to eat. A lot of them were in there in the dining room, she knew, but she did not want to go in there alone. She would rather have been sitting down, more out of sight, but there were no chairs along the sides of the room but only at the ends. Mrs. Ramsay’s drawing room, cleared for dancing, seemed enormous, and from where Rose stood, the ends of the room seemed not only far away but impassable, with sofas and chairs crowded together and people sitting there together, people who knew each other well but who did not know her very well, and she was younger than any of them and anxious not to appear to push herself upon them. Her mother had warned her not to be forward. It was only an accident that she was at the party at all. Father Kane had arranged for her to be there. The party was being given for the people who worked at Ramsay’s shop, where Rose’s father had worked before his death. Father Kane was very good. He had even arranged for Rose to get a ride in the car that brought a crowd of the girls from Ramsay’s.