a sardel except for the toothpick
through.

Sometimes it almost seemed as if Marcia did the purring. She could sit
like that, motionless, her very stare seeming to sleep. To Hattie that
stare was beautiful, and in a way it was. As if two blue little suns
were having their high noon.

Sometimes Marcia offered to help, because toward the end, Hattie's back
could ache at this process, terribly, the pain knotting itself into her
face when the rotary movement of her stirring arm began to yank at her
nerves.

"Momie, I'll stir for a while."

Marcia's voice was day-schooled. As clipped, as boxed, and as precise
as a hedge. Neat, too, as neat as the way her clear lips met, and her
teeth, which had a little mannerism of coming down after each word,
biting them off like threads. They were appealing teeth that had never
grown big or square. Very young corn. To Hattie there was something
about them that reminded her of a tiny set of Marcia's doll dishes that
she had saved. Little innocences.

"I don't mind stirring, dear. I'm not tired."

"But your face is all twisted."

Hattie's twisted face could induce in Marcia the same gagged pallor that
the egg in the morning or the red in the beefsteak juices brought there.

"Go in and play the piano awhile, Marcy, I'll be finished soon."

"Sh-h-h! No. Pussy-kitty's asleep."

As the cream grew heavier and its swirl in the pot slower, Hattie could
keep the twist out of her face only by biting her tongue. She did, and a
little arch of sweat came out in a mustache.

The brown mud of the cream began to fluff. Hattie rubbed a fleck of it
into her freckled forearm. Yes, Hattie's arm was freckled, and so was
the bridge of her nose, in a little saddle. Once there had been a
prettiness to the freckles because they whitened the skin they sprinkled
and were little stars to the moon reddiness of Hattie's hair. But the
red of the moon had set coldly in Hattie's hair now, and the stars were
just freckles, and there was the dreaded ridge of flesh showing above
the ridge of her corsets, and when she leaned forward to stir her cheeks
hung forward like a spaniel's, not of fat, but heaviness. Hattie's arms
and thighs were granite to the touch and to the scales. Kindly freckled
granite. She weighed almost twice what she looked. Marcia, whose hips
were like lyres, hated the ridge above the corset line and massaged it.
Mab smacking the Himalayas.

After a while, there in the window frame, Marcia cl