Over it a gilt-framed French engraving with "Maternal Love" writ
in elegant script beneath. A two-toned red rug ate in footsteps.
Mrs. Loeb let her head fall back against the chair and closed her eyes.
In her dark-stuff dress with its sheer-white collar, she was part of
the note of the room, except that her small bosom rose and fell too
rapidly. A pungent odor of cookery began to invade; the street lamps of
Washington Boulevard to pop out. The door from the hallway opened, but
at the entrance of her mother-in-law Mrs. Loeb did not rise, only folded
one foot closer under her.
"You, Sadie?"
"Yes."
"Herman home yet?"
"No."
"Smell? I fixed him red cabbage to-night."
"Yes, I smell."
"How she sits here in the dark. Thank goodness, Sadie, electricity we
don't have to economize on."
She pushed a wall key, a center chandelier of frosted electric bulbs
springing into radiance. In its immediate glare Mrs. Loeb regarded her
daughter-in-law, inert there beside the window.
"Get your embroidery, Sadie, and come down by me and Etta till the men
get home to supper. I want her to show you that cut-work stitch she's
putting in her lunch napkins."
"Ugh!"
"What?"
Mrs.
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