| OCR Text |
Show 128 It was a new life with the change in Papa, a new happiness. Papa bought Mama an Elgin watch. It had a gold case and a geometric design accented with dark blue enamel. Our family decided it was the most beautiful watch that had ever come out of Switzerland, although we had very little basis of comparison. Mama fastened it to her shirtwaist with a fancy, fleur-de-lis designed pin, and prized it like the Queen of England must have prized the crown jewels. Mama's watch had seventeen jewels, we were told. Naturally, she couldn't wear it all the time, and she sought safe places to put it in the house, never finding one she could really trust, and sometimes forgetting where she had put it last. "Where's my watch?" she would demand, rearing up in bed in the middle of the night, routing us all out of bed for the search. We would search all the places it had been found before: the sugar bowl where she kept her money, the till of the tin trunk, the velvet box in her dresser drawer, the vase on the piano, the little drawer under the album which had a picture of the Pony Express and stood on a stand. One night it was in none of those places, so Mama was sure one of the little children had taken it out to the ditch-bank to play. It was somebody's water turn, so the ditch was full, but we were dispatched to search it anyway, thrusting our arms into the cold water up to our shoulders, sifting the sand with our fingers. After some time Mama called off the search. "It was in the clock, " she said. "I distinctly remember, now, putting it there. " |
