A Young Man's Heart by Cornell Woolrich Read Free Book Online Page B

her. The pink wrapper radiated a cheerful glow in the light of the early sun, but her face was like old ivory. The old woman came and stood before him with a second cup. “Here’s yours,” she said.
    While he was drinking it Mariquita came in from the street with the baby to see if he were awake yet.
    “Finally!” she exclaimed. “I have been out there two hours waiting for you.”
    She squatted down on the floor, holding the baby between her knees, to allow him time to finish his breakfast.
    “Mira,” she said to the baby, pointing rudely to Blair, “if you ever become as lazy as that up there, I’ll let the owls have you.”
    “Tss!” admonished the old woman, “keep quiet, the young lady doesn’t feel well.”
    Estelle handed back her cup and stood up. “Now that he is out of the house, I will go in and try to get a little rest,” they heard her say. She reached the doorway, rested a hand against it a moment as if to steady herself, and continued down the red-tiled corridor, her pink wrapper gathered tight across the small of her back as she proceeded slowly on her way.
    “She did not sleep the whole night,” Mariquita said.
    “What does sleep matter?” the old woman answered sharply. “She is concerned with her soul.”
    That afternoon two friends of Estelle’s called on her. They were dressed almost identically, evidently the result of having both fancied the same pattern in some Paris fashion paper and of having handed it on to their native dressmakers without first consulting one another. Yet they appeared to be on fairly good terms, nevertheless. Ever so slightly conscious of their own elegance, they stood there in light green and light blue, aigrets in their turbans, flaring, daringly short skirts (nearly to their calves), tango slippers with ribbons that laced well above the ankles, and exchanged a quizzical look between themselves at being made to wait in the patio while the old woman went in to inquire. She returned with the information that Estelle had a headache and could not see anyone. Blair, who was a witness, saw their brows go up at this and heard them laugh mockingly. They turned and went away again, leaving no message of sympathy, concerning themselves only with the opening and tilting of their parasols, like great translucent wings of a disjointed butterfly, as they stepped out of the doorway.
    In about an hour’s time Estelle called Mariquita into her room. The latter, reappearing in the street-doorway after a lengthy interval, stood there holding the hem of her garment out before her and excitedly beckoned Blair over. By the time he joined her she had emptied the lap of her dress of numerous objects and was kneeling on the ground sorting them out.
    “Look what the señora gave me,” she said, turning a dazzled face up to him for a moment.
    Estelle’s burst of generosity had included a string of false pearls, a vial of liquid cheek-rouge, which showed fadedly pink at the top and was dark with sediment at the bottom, but when shaken, as Mariquita proceeded to do, resumed a rich garnet tint throughout; a mammoth linen rose with silver leaves from some tour-de-force hat, a pocket-mirror the size of a watch, a pair of kid gloves split at one of the fingertips, plush garters with satin rosettes, and a small metal cylinder containing a column of blue wax which could be made to rise and fall at pressure of the thumb (an eyebrow pencil—the first either one of them had seen. Mariquita, in ignorance of where to apply it, streaked the palm of her hand with it a number of times). All of them articles which Blair scornfully considered valueless and uninteresting, and not in the least worth inheriting.
    “But these are not anything,” the almost frantic Mariquita proceeded to tell him, “there is much more that is in the kitchen. Dresses— pero finas! finas! —shoes, and even two hats. She says I must take them home and show them first, and if they let me wear them, I can have