Quicksand
her personally? She, Helga Crane, who almost all her life had looked after herself, was she now to be looked after by Aunt Katrina and her husband? It didn‘t seem real.
It was late, very late, when finally she climbed into the great bed after having received an auntly kiss. She lay long awake reviewing the events of the crowded day. She was happy again. Happiness covered her like the lovely quilts under which she rested. She was mystified too. Her aunt‘s words came back to her. “You‘re young and a foreigner and-and different.” Just what did that mean, she wondered. Did it mean that the difference was to be stressed, accented? Helga wasn‘t so sure that she liked that. Hitherto all her efforts had been toward similarity to those about her.
“How odd,” she thought sleepily, “and how different from America!”
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