She fretted about the business, and imagined that things
were at a stand-still during her absence.
Fanny herself rose early. Her healthy young body, after a
night's sleep, was already recuperating from the month's
strain. She had planned a real Christmas dinner, to banish
the memory of the hasty and unpalatable lunches they had had
to gulp during the rush. There was to be a turkey, and
Fanny had warned Annie not to touch it. She wanted to stuff
it and roast it herself. She spent the morning in the
kitchen, aside from an occasional tip-toeing visit to her
mother's room. At eleven she found her mother up, and no
amount of coaxing would induce her to go back to bed. She
had read the papers and she said she felt rested already.
The turkey came out a delicate golden-brown, and deliciously
crackly. Fanny, looking up over a drumstick, noticed, with
a shock, that her mother's eyes looked strangely sunken, and
her skin, around the jaws and just under the chin, where her
loose wrapper revealed her throat, was queerly yellow and
shriveled.
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