Aunt Bella's face was much pinker and richer and more important than
Mamma's face. She thought she wouldn't have minded quite so much if
Aunt Bella had been white and brown and pretty, like Mamma.

There--she had spilled the gravy.

Little knots came in Aunt Bella's pink forehead. Her face loosened and
swelled with a red flush; her mouth pouted and drew itself in again,
pulled out of shape by something that darted up the side of her nose
and made her blink.

She thought: "I know--I know--I _know_ it's going to happen."

It didn't. Aunt Bella only said, "You should look at your plate and
spoon, dear."

After lunch, when they were resting, you could feel naughtiness coming
on. Then Pidgeon carried you on his back to the calf-shed; or Mrs.
Fisher took you up into her bedroom to see her dress.

In Mrs. Fisher's bedroom a smell of rotten apples oozed through the
rosebud pattern on the walls. There were no doors inside, only places
in the wall-paper that opened. Behind one of these places there was a
cupboard where Mrs. Fisher kept her clothes. Sometimes she would take
the lid off the big box covered with wall-paper and show you her Sunday
bonnet. You sat on the bed, and she gave you peppermint balls to suck
while she peeled off her black merino and squeezed herself into her
black silk. You watched for the moment when the brooch with the black
tomb and the weeping willow on it was undone and Mrs. Fisher's chin
came out first by the open collar and Mrs. Fisher began to swell. When