She revokes so in bridge, and I think it's terrible for a
grandmother to blondine so red; but we've both been widows for almost
eight years. Eight years," repeated Mrs. Samstag on a small scented
sigh.
He was inordinately sensitive to these allusions, reddening and wanting
to seem appropriate.
"Poor, poor little woman!"
"Heigh-ho," she said, and again, "Heigh-ho."
It was about the eyes that Mrs. Samstag showed most plainly whatever
inroads into her clay the years might have gained. There were little
dark areas beneath them like smeared charcoal and two unrelenting sacs
that threatened to become pouchy.
Their effect was not so much one of years, but they gave Mrs. Samstag,
in spite of the only slightly plump and really passable figure, the look
of one out of health.
What ailed her was hardly organic. She was the victim of periodic and
raging neuralgic fires that could sweep the right side of her head and
down into her shoulder blade with a great crackling and blazing of
nerves. It was not unusual for her daughter Alma to sit up the one or
two nights that it could endure, unfailing, through the wee hours, with
hot applications.
For a week sometimes, these attacks heralded their comings with little
jabs, like the pricks of an exploring needle.
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