He simply pushed them
to one side and went on with his reading.
Again that horrible anger swept hot as flame over Howard. He
could have cursed him. His hands shook as he handed out other
presents to his mother and Laura and the baby. He tried to joke.
"I didn't know how old the baby was, so she'll have to grow to
some of these things."
But the pleasure was all gone for him and for the rest. His heart
swelled almost to a feeling of pain as he looked at his mother.
There she sat with the presents in her lap. The shining silk came
too late for her. It threw into appalling relief her age, her poverty,
her work-weary frame. "My God!" he almost cried aloud, "how
little it would have taken to lighten her life!"
Upon this moment, when it seemed as if he could endure no more,
came the smooth voice of William McTurg:
"Hello, folkses!"
"Hello, Uncle Bill! Come in."
"That's what we came for," laughed a woman's voice.
"Is that you, Rose?" asked Laura.
"It's me-Rose," replied the laughing girl as she bounced into the
room and greeted everybody in a breathless sort of way.
"You don't mean little Rosy?"
"Big Rosy now," said William.
Howard looked at the handsome girl and smiled, saying in a nasal
sort of tone, "Wal, wal! Rosy, how you've growed since I saw
yeh!"
"Oh, look at all this purple and fine linen! Am I left out?"
Rose was a large girl of twenty-five or thereabouts, and was called
an old maid.
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