"What?"
"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have."
"Seen what?"
"Don't make mama come out and say it. For eight years I've been as grieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, and he—asked me tonight."
There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smeared there by a hand.
"Asked you what?"
"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer, steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face."
"Mama, you—what—are you saying?"
"Alma?"
There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon and Miss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little face stiff with the clench of her mouth.