She went into her room and shut the door.
MRS. RISLEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER
MRS. RISLEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER
She was an old, old woman. She was crippled with rheumatism and bent with toil. Her hair was gray,—not that lovely white that softens and beautifies the face, but harsh, grizzled gray. Her shoulders were round, her chest was sunken, her face had many deep wrinkles. Her feet were large and knotty; her hands were large, too, with great hollows running down their backs. And how painfully the cords stood out in her old, withered neck!
For the twentieth time she limped to the window and flattened her face against the pane. It was Christmas day. A violet sky sparkled coldly over the frozen village. The ground was covered with snow; the roofs were white with it. The chimneys looked redder than usual as they emerged from its pure drifts and sent slender curls of electric-blue smoke into the air.
The wind was rising. Now and then it came sweeping down the hill, pushing a great sheet of snow, powdered like dust, before it. The window-sashes did not fit tightly, and some of it sifted into the room and climbed into little cones on the floor. Snow-birds drifted past, like soft, dark shadows; and high overhead wild geese went sculling through the yellow air, their mournful “hawnk-e-hawnk-hawnks” sinking downward like human cries.
As the old woman stood with her face against the window and her weak eyes strained down the street, a neighbor came to the door.
“Has your daughter an’ her fambly come yet, Mis’ Risley?” she asked, entering sociably.
“Not yet,” replied Mrs. Risley, with a good attempt at cheerfulness; but her knees suddenly began shaking, and she sat down.
“Why, she’d ought to ’a’ come on the last train, hadn’t she?”