“Eat it all,” she would urge. “Take it now, while it is hot. See, you are looking better already. Just another spoonful.”
In the DeJongs’ plight she found a grisly satisfaction, cloaked by commiseration. Selina, white and weak following her tragic second confinement, still found strength to refuse the widow’s sustaining potions. The widow, her silks making a gentle susurrus in the bare little bedroom, regarded Selina with eyes in which pity and triumph made horrid conflict. Selina’s eyes, enormous now in her white face, were twin pools of Peake pride.
“It’s most kind of you, Mrs. Paarlenberg, but I don’t like soup.”
“A whole chicken boiled in it.”
“Especially chicken soup. Neither does Pervus. But I’m sure Mrs. Voorhees will enjoy it.” This being Pervus’s old housekeeper pressed now into temporary emergency service.
It was easy to see why the DeJong house still was unpainted two years after Selina’s rosy plans began to form; why the fences still sagged, the wagon creaked, the single horse hauled the produce to market.
Selina had been married almost three years when there came to her a letter from Julie Hempel, now married. The letter had been sent to the Klaas Pool farm and Jozina had brought it to her. Though she had not seen it since her days at Miss Fister’s school, Selina recognized with a little hastening heart-beat the spidery handwriting with the shading and curleycues. Seated on her kitchen steps in her calico dress she read it.
Darling Selina:—
I thought it was so queer that you didn’t answer my letter and now I know you must have thought it queer that I did not answer yours. I found your letter to me, written long ago, when I was going over Mother’s things last week. It was the letter you must have written when I was in Kansas City. Mother had never given it to me. I am not reproaching her. You see, I had written you from Kansas City, but had sent my letter to Mamma to mail because I never could remember that funny address of yours in the country.
Mamma died three weeks ago. Last week I was going over her things—a trying task, you may imagine—and there were your two letters addressed to me. She had never destroyed them. Poor Mamma . . .