Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/85

 anything but the boy he used to be. A tall, bony woman, her dour Lutheran face masked the affection and awe she felt for this strange man returned in place of the high school graduate who had left eight years ago.

The neighbors had been interested and then envious of the letters postmarked New York City and then Paris France. At first she had felt apologetic at having a son embarrassingly different from other boys, an artist! To fill the void until his return (for Mrs. Brush never had a moment's doubt he would return) and to try to envision what he w'as doing, she tore out magazine covers and hung them in narrow gilt frames in the parlor and her bedroom. Pictures of little boys in patched pants, sometimes the skin showing in unmentionable places, with fishing rods, or a snow scene just as real.

But sometimes now Mrs. Brush wished Clem had stayed away. God forbid anything should happen to him, but she missed the envy and awe of neighbors when the postman called out importantly so the whole neighborhood heard, "Letter from Paris France, Mrs. Brush." Now envy had become a mixture of pity and amusement because of that blue tarn and crazy red beard. His father always had shaved twice a week until the day he died while Clem was in the war. What would his father, who did everything so right and proper, successful too in his grain and feed business and not ever considering anyone's feelings, have thought of such a get-up? She thought Clem would bring home beautiful pictures of foreign places and she would invite neighbors in to admire. But he brought nothing. At last, after she had asked many times, he gave her a scene of a little park with a big arch and red houses around it. You could hardly make it out because the lumps of paint in bright colors looked crazy. But if you stood away and squinted you could sort of see it was what he said—Washington Square in New York City.

Everything for supper was on the table except the coffee, and Mrs. Brush returned to the kitchen for the percolator.

"Want your coffee now, Clem?"

"No thanks, Ma, I'll have mine later."

Mrs. Brush poured her coffee with a prickle of annoyance at his highfalutin way of having coffee, not even with the dessert, but last by itself.

Clem looked at the round laden table. Pickles, apple sauce, mashed potatoes, com, loin of pork, lemon pie, bread, butter, coffee, and dishes with ugly little painted flowers. Renoir had been a china painter. A wave of nostalgia swept away his exhilaration at the Rh