THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS

SISTERS

VOLUME X




TO

FRANCES ROSE BENET

Dear mother of my mother's child, to you
The tribute brings not praise from me alone,
Still clings some grace of hers to what I do,
And the gift comes in her name, as my own.




CHAPTER I


Cherry Strickland came in the door of the Strickland house, and
shut it behind her, and stood so, with her hands behind her on the
knob, and her slender body leaning forward, and her breath rising
and falling on deep, ecstatic breaths. It was May in California,
she was just eighteen, and for twenty-one minutes she had been
engaged to be married.