As he
took a look at Deolda going out of the room, he said:
"P--hew! What's that?"
"I told you I was sick and had to get a girl to help out--what with
Susie visiting and all," said my aunt, very short.
"Help out? Help out! My lord! _help out!_ What's her name--Beth Sheba?"
Now this wasn't as silly as it sounded. I suppose what Uncle Ariel meant
was that Deolda made him think of Eastern queens and Araby. But my
attention was distracted by the appearance of two wild-looking boys with
a green-blue sea chest which served Deolda as a trunk. I followed it to
her room and started making friends with Deolda, who opened the trunk,
and I glimpsed something embroidered in red flowers.
"Oh, Deolda, let me see. Oh, let me see!" I cried.
It was a saffron shawl all embroidered with splotchy red flowers as big
as my hand. It made me tingle as it lay there in its crinkly folds,
telling of another civilization and other lands than our somber shores.
The shawl and its crawling, venomous, alluring flowers marked Deolda off
from us. She seemed to belong to the shawl and its scarlet insinuations.
"That was my mother's," she said. Then she added this astounding thing:
"My mother was a great dancer. All Lisbon went wild about her. When she
danced the whole town went crazy.
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