There in the
pink, close, sugar-smelling, soft atmosphere sat his mother, Amy,
Mrs. Alweed and little Miss Pyncheon. His mother, with her lace cap
and white hair and soft plump hands, was pouring tea through a
strainer as though it were a rite. On her plate were three little
frilly papers that had held sugary cakes, on her lips were fragments
of sugar. Amy, in an ugly grey dress, sat severely straight upon a
hard chair and was apparently listening to Miss Pyncheon, but her
eyes, suspicious and restless, moved like the eyes of a newly
captured animal. Mrs. Alweed, stout in pink with a large hat full of
roses, smiled and smiled, waiting only for a moment when she could
amble off once again into space safe on the old broad back of her
family experiences, the only conversational steed to whose care she
ever entrusted herself. She had a son Hector, a husband, Mr. Alweed,
and a sister-in-law, Miss Alweed; she had the greatest confidence in
the absorbed attention of the slightest of her acquaintances.
"Hector, he's my boy, you know--although why I call him a boy I
can't think--because he's twenty-two and a half--he's at Cambridge,
Christs College--well, this morning I had a letter .
Pages:
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355