"You'd better go to bed. You feel limp as a dead leaf."
"Yes." She stretched comfortably. "In a minute——"
IX
Catherine sat at one of the living room windows, the floor about her chair littered with packages, the result of her shopping for the children. She unwrapped them methodically, clipped a name from the rolls of tape in her basket, and sewed the label in place. Spencer Hammond; Marian Hammond; Letitia Hammond. She was thankful that none of them had a longer name! After three gloomy days the sun shone again, pricking out spots of red in the roofs of the distance, falling in splotches of brilliance on the white stuff Catherine handled. The children were playing in the dining room, where the east windows admitted the broad shafts of sunlight. Poor kids! They had begged her to go outdoors with them, but her mother had telephoned that she was coming in.
Catherine had not known she was in town. She had been visiting her son in Wisconsin, George Spencer. Catherine had seen little of that brother since her own departure for college; he had married and gone west, sending back, at astonishingly frequent intervals, photographs of his increasing family. Mrs. Spencer visited him at least once each year, returning always with delighted accounts of the children, of George's business, of his wife.
Catherine folded the striped pajamas and laid them on the pile at her right. Her thoughts drifted around her mother and the small apartment in the Fifties where she kept house for Margaret, the youngest of the family. Letty came in a little rush toward her.
"Letty draw." She spread the paper on Catherine's knee. "For Gram." Her yellow head bent over it intently.
"What is it, Letty?" Catherine laid a finger softly on the little hollow just at the base of Letty's neck, an adorable hollow with a twist of pale hair above it.
"She says it's a picture of her fishing," called Marian. "Catching cunners. But I'm painting a good picture of our house for Grandma——"
"Letty paint?" Letty looked up, her eyes crinkled.