e--too well groomed.
Rose-Marie, looking at him, felt a sudden primitive desire to see him
dirty and mussed up. She wished, and the wish surprised her, that she
might sometime see him with his hair rumpled, his collar torn, his eye
blackened and--she could hardly suppress a hysterical desire to laugh as
the thought struck her--his nose bleeding. Somehow his smooth, hard
neatness was more offensive to her than his mother's dirty apron--than
his small brother's frankly grimy hands. She spoke to him in a cool
little voice that belied her inward disturbance.

"Where," she questioned, "are your mother and Ella? I want to see them."

With a movement that was not ungraceful Jim flung wide the door. Indeed,
Rose-Marie told herself, as she stepped into the Volsky flat, Jim was
never ungraceful. There was something lithe and cat-like in his slightest
movement, just as there was something feline in the expression of his
eyes. Rose-Marie often felt like a small, helpless mouse when Jim was
staring at her.

"Where are your mother and Ella?" she questioned again as she stepped
into the room. "I _do_ want to see them!"

Jim was dragging forward a chair. He answered.

"Then yer'd better sit down 'n' make yourself at home," he told her, "fer
they've gone out. They're down t' th' hospital, now, takin' a last slant
at Pa. Ma's cryin' to beat th' band--you'd think that she really liked
_him_! An' Ella's cryin', too--she's fergot how he uster whip her wit' a
strap when she was a kid! An' they've took Bennie; Bennie ain't cryin'
but he's a-holdin' to Ma's hand like a baby. Oh," he laughed sneeringly,
"it's one grand little family group that they make!"

Rose-Marie sat down gingerly upon the edge of the chair. She did not
relish the prospect of spending any time alone with Jim, but a certain
feeling of pride kept her from leaving the place. She would not let Jim
know that she feared him--it would flatter him to think that he had so
much influence over her. She would stay, even though the staying made her
uneasy! But she hoped, from the bottom of her heart, that the rest of the
family would not be long at the hospital.

"When did they go out?" she questioned, trying to make her tone casual.
"Do you expect them back soon?"

Jim sat down in a chair that was near her own. He leaned forward as
he answered.

"They haven't been gone so awful long," he told her. "An'--say--what's
th' difference _when_ they gets back? I never have no chance