The foreground holds the actors who draw our interest. They stand, slightly to our left, on the front porch of a house. Gazing up toward the woman standing in the doorway, a small dark-haired girl, about six years old, compels attention. Her attentive eyes and the inquisitive tilt of her head suggest intelligence beyond her age. She could be the child of the man and woman flanking the baby carriage, two of the other actors. A stern, but not hostile, expression worn by the woman who is stepping from the house into the doorway makes estimating her age difficult -- more than forty-five we think. She’s wearing a crisp shirtwaist, not a uniform. Meet the lady of the house. From several feet away, the painting appears to be a study in muted tones. Neither landscape nor portrait, it’s a tableau; characters in clothes of the 1920s.

Speculating about the action tempts us, but first we study the background. Leafy trees, maybe oaks, line a residential street. Four houses, one two-story, the others single, march horizontally across the canvas, all similar -- neat and rather drab. Small yards of pale grass occupy the spaces between sidewalk and porches. Lacy curtains show inside every window on the street. A shadow in a window at the third house from the right holds the curtain aside. An inquisitive neighbor? The driver of the black Model T entering the scene from the left, on the right side of the street, is too distant to see clearly. We viewers agree the neighborhood is a quiet one.

The “carriage couple” direct their attention to the woman in the doorway and she at them. Is there a baby in that carriage or some product for sale -- Fuller Brushes? Another detail emerges from the muted montage. A suitcase, child-sized, stands near the left foot of the old-eyed child.

Eyes squinted, mouth puckered in the shape of some word beginning with W, the man looks less like a salesman than a bill collector. The woman at his side fixes her gaze near the stern woman’s knees.