Grandparent and child -- Fiction; Spanish Americans -- Fiction
“Yes, you have, my dear. You have a photograph of him standing in front
of the drug store and looking dreamily in at--at the strawberry sundaes.
It is a most romantic pose, really.”
Albert laughed. He remembered the photograph. It was one of a series of
snapshots taken with Miss Kelsey's camera one Saturday afternoon when
a party of young people had met in front of the sundae dispensary. Jane
had insisted on “snapping” everyone.
“That reminds me that I have never seen the rest of those photographs,”
he said.
“Haven't you?” exclaimed Jane. “Well, you ought to see them. I have
Madeline's with me. It is a dream, if I do say it as I took it.”
She produced the snapshot, which showed her friend standing beside the
silver-leaf tree before the druggist's window and smiling at the camera.
It was a good likeness and, consequently, a very pretty picture.
“Isn't it a dream, just as I said?” demanded the artist. “Honest now,
isn't it?”
Albert of course declared it to be beyond praise.
“May I have this one?” he asked, on the impulse of the moment.
“Don't ask me, stupid,” commanded Jane, mischievously. “It isn't my
funeral--or my portrait, either.”
“May I?” he repeated, turning to Madeline. She hesitated.
“Why--why yes, you may, if you care for it,” she said. “That particular
one is Jane's, anyway, and if she chooses to give it away I don't see
how I can prevent her. But why you should want the old thing I can't
conceive. I look as stiff and wooden as a sign-post.”
Jane held up a protesting finger.
“Fibs, fibs, fibs,” she observed. “Can't conceive why he should want it!
As if you weren't perfectly aware that he will wear it next his heart
and--Oh, don't put it in THAT pocket! I said next your heart, and that
isn't on your RIGHT side.”
Albert took the photograph home and stuck it between the frame and glass
of his bureau. Then came a sudden remembrance of his parting with Helen
and with it a twinge of conscience. He had begged her to have nothing
to do with any other fellow. True she had refused to promise and
consequently he also was unbound, but that made no difference--should
not make any. So he put the photograph at the back of the drawer where
he kept his collars and ties, with a resolve never to look at it. He did
not look at it--very often.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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