"My, what a homely picture!" Mis' Holcomb says, looking at a scene of a Japanese lady and a mountain.
"What in the world is these forceps for?" says Mis' Toplady, balancing an ivory glove-stretcher with Miss Mayhew's initials on. I knew that it was, because I'd asked her.
"What she wants of a dust-cap I dunno," Mis' Holcomb contributes, pointing to the little lace and ribbon cap hanging beside the toilet-table.
And I'd wondered that myself. She put it on for breakfast, like she was going to do some work; then she never done a thing the whole morning, only wrote.
Then all of a sudden was when I come out with something surprising.
"Why," says I, "it's gone!"
"What's gone?" they says. And I was looking so hard I couldn't answer—bureau, chest of drawers, bookshelves, I looked on all of them. "It ain't here anywhere," says I, "and he was that handsome—"
I told them about the photograph, as well as I could. It was always standing on the bureau, right close up by the glass—a man's picture that always made me want to say: "Well, you look just exactly the way you ought to look. And I believe you are it." He looked like what you mean when you say "man" when you're young—big and dark and frank and boyish and manly, with eyes that give their truth to you and count on having yours back again. That kind.
"Land," I says. "I'd leave a picture like that up in my room no matter what occurred between me and the one the picture was the picture of. I couldn't take it down."