I feel atmospheres at once; I just can't help it. And
when I get feeling other people's atmospheres too much I lose my own,
and then I can't paint. I began so well the other day with the picture
of that Armenian peddler, and now since Alice left I can't do a thing
with it; his bare yellow knees look just like ugly grape-fruit. I wish
Sally was in. She can't cook, but she can do a song-and-dance that's
worth its weight in gold when you're down in the mouth.
--Just then I looked out of the window and saw my mother-in-law coming
in. For a minute I was frightened. I'd never seen her look like that
before--so white and almost OLD; she seemed hardly able to walk, and I
ran to the door and helped her in, and put her in a chair and her feet
on a footstool, and got her my dear little Venetian bottle of
smelling-salts with the long silver chain; it's so beautiful it makes
you feel better just to look at it. I whisked Peter's shoes out into
the hall, and when I sat down by her she put her hand out to me and
said, "Dear child," and I got all throaty, the way I do when any one
speaks like that to me, for, oh, I HAVE been lonesome for Dad and
Momsey and my own dear home! though no one ever seems to imagine it,
and I said:
"Oh, can't I do something for you, Madonna?" I usually just call her
"you," but once in a great while, when there's nobody else around, I
call her Madonna, and I know she likes it, even if she does think it a
little Romish or sacrilegious or something queer.
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