"Kiss me!"
Seeing me so a-tremble, she obeyed her own injunction. With slow
deliberation she crushed her lips, full and voluptuous, into mine. The
warmth of them seemed to catch hold of something deep down in me, and,
with exquisite painfulness, draw it out. Blinded with emotion, I
clutched close to her. She laughed. I put one hand over her full breast
as infants do. She pushed me back.
"There, that's enough for one day--a promise of sweets to come!" and she
laughed again, with a hearty purr like a cat that has a mouse at its
mercy.
She rose and carried in the pan of potatoes we had just finished
peeling. And I saw her sturdy, but not unshapely ankles going from me as
she went up the steps from the yard, her legs gleaming white through her
half-silk hose (that were always coming down, and that she was always
twisting up, just under her knees, before my abashed eyes). She wore
shoes much too little for her plump feet ... and, when not abroad, let
them yawn open unbuttoned. And her plump body was alive and bursting
through her careless, half-fastened clothes.
She sang with a deep sultriness of voice as she walked away with the pan
of potatoes.
* * * * *
"You ought to see my Florrie read books!" exclaimed the mother.
Flora did read a lot ... but chiefly the erotic near-society novels that
Belford used to print....
"Yes, she's a smart girl, she is."
And the father....
"I won't work till the unions get better conditions for a man. I won't
be no slave to no man."
* * * * *
One sultry afternoon I went into the restaurant and found Flora away.
Poignantly disappointed, I asked where she was.
"--Gone on a trip!" her mother explained, without explaining.