Slim and gray-haired, a little
worn by life's struggle, her blood quickened at the thought of a son
like Derry. The warmth of his handclasp, the glimpse of that inner
self which he had given her, these were things to hold close to her
heart. She had known on that first night that he was--different. She
had not dreamed that she should hold him--close.
Rather pensively she arranged her window. It was snowing hard, and in
spite of the fact that Christmas was only three days away, customers
were scarce.
The window display was made effective by the use of Jean's purple
camels--a sandy desert, a star overhead, blazing with all the realism
of a tiny electric bulb behind it, the Wise Men, the Inn where the Babe
lay, and in a far corner a group of shepherds watching a woolly flock--
Her cyclamen was dead. A window had been left open, and when she
arrived one morning she had found it frozen.
She had thanked Ulrich Stoelle for it, in a pleasantly worded note. She
had not dared express her full appreciation, lest she seem fulsome.
Few men in her experience had sent her flowers. Never in all the years
of her good friendship with Bruce McKenzie had he bestowed upon her a
single bloom.
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