Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny,
close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a
truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror
long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before
he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney
Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I
do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was
on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her
hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that
he always entered. Then she heard his step
on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying
little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and
now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still
pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He
looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only
twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a
new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter
at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and
there was an expression in them that she could not read, and
it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor
disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she
had been prepared for.
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