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Show more boxes like them in the closet, in the cellar, in the attic. "Anyway," Annis is saying, "I think she ought to have a chance." She is thinking, he dcides, about the nightgown and the recalcitrant child. He says nothing; he focusses his mind clearly on the girl, but he cannot decide how old she will be by now. "A bit of a sense of the flow of generations wouldn't hurt her," Annis continues. "You know, great-grandmother's nightgown, grandmother's nightgown, now it's mine. Maybe she'll save it for her own daughter." "She won't. And she won't have a daughter, either." "Well, perhaps you're right." But Annis does not seem to be disturbed by this thought; she continues packing with the same quiet explorativeness as before. "It's like treasure-hunting," she had said once to him. He watches the way she moves, and the remarkable grace of her body for a woman of her age. Mow and then she holds an old scarf to her cheek, or slips a forgotten glove onto her hand, holds it up, admires it. There is no hurry in her actions. But she stops, turns, studies her husband, as if she has Suddenly noticed something. "Aren't you going to do yours?" she asks. Robeck's eyes follow the outlines of the enormous dresser they share: five copious drawers on the right, which are hers; his three on the left, containing his thin, carefully stacked piles of undershorts, handkerchiefs, two pairs of folded trousers, and several rather harshly laundered shirts. He wonders briefly why he has not thrown the shirts away; they are too big for |
