"I think I'll send you back home to visit the folks this fall."
* * * * *
There was a restaurant just around the corner from where we lived in our
second story flat--a restaurant which bore the legend stuck up in the
window, "Home Cooking." The sign itself was of a dull, dirty,
fly-specked white which ought to have been a sufficient warning to the
nice palate.
The place was run by a family of three ... there was Mister Brown, the
man, a huge-built, blotch-faced, retired stone-mason, his meagre little
wife, Mrs. Brown, and their grass-widow daughter, Flora.... Flora did
but little work, except to lean familiarly and with an air of unspoken
intimacy, over the tables of the men, as she slouched up with their food
... and she liked to sit outside in the back yard when there was
sunshine ... in the hammock for more comfort ... shelling peas or
languidly peeling potatoes.
Flora's vibrant, little, wasplike mother whose nose was so sharp and red
that it made me think of Paul's ferret--she bustled and buzzed about,
doing most of the work.
* * * * *
Looking out from our back window, I could see Flora lolling, and I would
read or write a little and then the unrest would become too strong and I
would go down to her. Soon two potato knives would be working.
"Come and sit by me in the hammock."
I liked that invitation ... she was plump to heaviness and sitting in
the hammock crushed us pleasantly together.
This almost daily propinquity goaded my adolescent hunger into an
infatuation for her,--I thought I was in love with her,--though I never
quite reconciled myself to the cowlikeness with which she chewed gum.
She was as free and frank of herself as I was curious and timid.
"Johnnie, what small feet and little hands you have ... you're a
regular aristocrat."
* * * * *
A pause.
I give her a poem written to her. She reads it, letting her knife stick
in a half-peeled potato. She looks up at me out of heavy-lidded eyes.
* * * * *
"I believe you're falling in love with me."