Two gilt-framed
photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel. A
heap of hand-made cushions. Art editions of the gift-poets and some
circulating library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawn
up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its head rest worn
from kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow.
From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow, Alma sprang up at
her mother's entrance. Sure enough she had been reading and her cheek
was a little flushed and crumpled from where it has been resting in the
palm of her hand.
"Mama," she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching on the
ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late."
There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a little
dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness
that her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the
pupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark like cisterns and to young
Leo Friedlander, rather apt his comparison, too, her mouth was exactly
the shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into his
heart.
And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen. There was that kind of
timid adolescence about her, yet when she said, "Mama, you stayed down
so late," the bang of a little pistol-shot was back somewhere in her
voice.
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