To sit down opposite Mr
Crow would have made it ordinary "company"; she passed
the plates and turned it into a function.
She was waiting for them on the parlour sofa when Crow
brought them in out of the nipping early dark of December,
Elmore staying behind in the yard. with the horses. She
sat on the sofa in her best black dress with the bead
trimming on the neck and sleeves, a good deal pushed up
and wrinkled across the bosom, which had done all that
would ever be required of it when it gave Elmore and Abe
their start in life. Her wiry hands were crossed in her
lap in the moment of waiting: you could tell by the look
of them that they were not often crossed there. They were
strenuous hands; the whole worn figure was strenuous,
and the narrow set mouth, and the eyes which had looked
after so many matters for so long, and even the way the
hair was drawn back into a knot in a fashion that would
have given a phrenologist his opportunity. It was a
different Mrs Crow from the one that sat in the midst of
her poultry and garden-stuff in the Elgin market square;
but it was even more the same Mrs Crow, the sum of a
certain measure of opportunity and service, an imperial
figure in her bead trimming, if the truth were known.
The room was heated to express the geniality that was
harder to put in words.
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