The Family
independent, and would tug at her leggings or
overshoes a great while before she asked for
help.
When they were little girls, Kathleen adored her older sister and liked to wait on her, was always more excited about Rosie’s new dresses and winter coat than about her own. This attachment had lasted even after they were grown. St. Peter had never seen any change in it until Rosamond announced her engagement to Louie Marsellus. Then, all at once, Kathleen seemed to be done with her sister. Her father believed she couldn’t forgive Rosie’s forgetting Tom so quickly.
It was dark when the Professor got back to the old house and sat down at his writing-table. He would have an hour on his notes, he told himself, in spite of families and fortunes. And he had it. But when he looked up from his writing as the Angelus was ringing, two faces at once rose in the shadows outside the yellow circle of his lamp: the handsome face of his older daughter, surrounded by violet-dappled fur, with a cruel upper lip and scornful half-closed eyes, as she had approached her car that afternoon before she saw him; and Kathleen, her square little chin set so fiercely, her white cheeks actually becoming green under her swollen eyes. He couldn’t believe it. He rose quickly and went to his one window, opened it wider, and stood looking at the dark clump of pine
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