"I don't see where you get such ideas. Ethel and I don't talk that way. We don't even think that way, Anne."
"Maybe when I am as old as you—-" Anne began, and was startled at the look on Amy's face.
"I'm not old!" Amy said passionately. "Anne, I haven't lived at all, and I'm only thirty."
Anne stared at her. "Oh, my darling, I didn't mean—-"
"Of course you didn't. And it was silly of me to say such a thing. Anne, I'm cold. I'm going to sit on the foot of your bed and wrap up while I talk to you."
Anne's bed had four pineapple posts and a pink canopy. The governor of a state had slept in that bed for years. He was one of the Merryman grandfathers. Amy could have bought mountains of food for the price of that bed. But she would have starved rather than sell it.
Anne under the pink canopy was like a rose—a white rose with a faint flush. The color in Amy's cheeks was fixed and hard. Yet even with her oldness and tiredness and metal curlers she had the look of race which attracted Murray.
"Anne," she said, "Murray and I had a long talk about you the other day."
"Murray always talks—long." Anne was yawning.
"Please be serious, Anne. He wants to marry you."