She studied the hands under the sheet. The knobby joints, the callus.
How clever those hands could have been!
Even in her first grades in school she loved to sketch. But there was no money to develop her talent.
And when Ben Webster came with his handsomeness and charm she didn't care about it.
But later her talent helped her through many dark hours. With it she could sometimes lighten fear and trouble by her own feeble attempts to create. A funny face would appear on a brown shopping bag. A white box lid became a winter scene. She remembered that in her floor scrubbing years there was a time when she worked in a school house. How tempting was the black-board when a piece of chalk had been carelessly left in the trough! Once she had almost completed a picture of a city street when a fellow employee poked her head around the half closed door.
Ada quickly smudged the picture with her floor cloth.
But the time came when she had to stop work. No more would the old joints bend and stretch.
Then Ellie came to her room one evening with determination in her eyes. "I'm taking you to another home, Mother," she said, firmly.
Ada was too tired to protest. "Where?" she asked.
"Let's play a kind of game," said Ellie. "Close your eyes and I will lead you."