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 reserved her effusion for a heroic figure which blocked the doorway.

Mama! she cried, as she descended from the automobile. Extending her arms with an enveloping gesture, she clutched the shoulders of the older woman and implanted swift kisses on either cheek.

Mama, Ambrose noted now or later, weighed nearly three hundred pounds and stood something over five feet six. She had upholstered this unwieldy mass in black satin which fell just above the appropriate ankles to support such a structure. Mama's black hair was combed in a pompadour back from her florid face, furrowed and puffed. Her bead-like blue eyes shone like little points buried deep in flesh. Her huge porous nose was more visible, while her small mouth pouted prettily above a chin that undulated indefinitely downward and inward. It seemed incredible that this flabby monster could have produced so exquisitely finished—a creation as Imperia. Ambrose was further astonished to hear Mama speak with an accent unmistakably middle western in a voice not unlike that of a nasal foghorn.

The party entered a huge hall, hung with tapestries and Spanish shawls and oriental rugs, punctuated with Iberian chests, Moroccan ottomans,