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Show Twisters . . . 22 Mrs. Smiley must have heard us all right because another light went on inside. We could see her crossing the living room, sort of swaying from side to side the way she does. She's just a little bitty thing, but with legs like parentheses, she walks funny. "Who is it?" she called as she came along. Arthur answered. "It's me, Mrs. Smiley. Me and Dan." "Oh my!" She opened the door. "Isn't this nice? Won't you come in?" "We're on our way to my house, but Dan wanted to see your new door." I did? Mrs. Smiley flicked on the porch light so I could see. "Isn't it a beauty?" she asked. Then she demonstrated the lock and explained how her new door didn't Bqueak, didn't slam, didn't swell up and get stuck in the kind of drippy, drizzly weather we'd been having. "Wow!" I exclaimed, starting to be impressed. I pictured Mrs. Smiley's original door. Inside a green wooden frame was this screen with fourteen patches on it by actual count-one of them dating back as far as World War II. She had sewed her patches on with different colors of yarn, which she said attracted the butterflies. "I sure hated to part with my old door," she sighed, "after the years of service it gave me, but when my son came visiting from Ohio, he insisted." She shook her head sadly. "Why don't you get rid of that old eyesore?" is the way he put it. Finally there wasn't anything else to talk about and the wind was threatening to blow her over. She made us promise to tell our mothers hello. I was supposed to remind mine that Mrs. Smiley would need her hair set Friday morning because of our Presbyterian Church bazaar. |
