Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/50

40 smile and nod, and make motions with her hands on her chest, in the region of her windpipe. Finally she was able to gasp something about "the hill," "bless me," and "my breath."

It seemed to Reba that she was heavier than ever. She must weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, Reba thought. When she was able to take off her things, she exposed hands like the butcher's, with fat pink fingers, with rings on them that made the flesh bulge. Her arms were like great soft legs, and she called attention to her wrists, that looked like swollen ankles, by wearing a leather strap tightly around one with a watch on it. Her face was as red as Reba remembered it. There were dark purple veins in her cheeks which looked like rivers and tributaries in a geography book. Her hair was carelessly knotted—no wonder! Probably she couldn't reach it very well with those arms—and the waterfalls of lace down the front of her broad bosom were not very clean. She wheezed and laughed continually in the same old way. Before she had been in the house half an hour, Reba caught the ridiculous little grunt. But nobody else laughed with Cousin Pattie. Her abundant good-nature could not melt the frigid reception that had been prepared for her.

David was not in evidence at all when she first arrived. He had shut himself up in his room upon his arrival from the factory (he looked upon Cousin Pattie's advent as a personal injury) and he stayed there until Aunt Augusta's "David! David! Supper!" crescendoing from the newel-post had routed him out.

All through the evening meal it seemed to Reba as if she couldn't endure it if some one didn't say