to stop here for a delectable glass of assorted sweet compounds. She
was on terms of intimacy with the colored man in a crisp linen coat
who presided over the refreshments, and he invariably gave her an
extra spoonful of the marron paste she preferred. When at lunch, it
might be, she cared for very little, her mother would complain
absently:

"You must stop eating those sickening mixtures. They'd ruin any
skin." At this she invariably found the diminutive mirror in the bag
on her lap and glanced at her own slightly improved color. The
burden of the feminine conversations in which Mrs. Condon was
privileged to join, Linda discovered, was directed toward these
overwhelming considerations of appearance. And their importance,
communicated to her, resulted in a struggle between the desire to
preserve her skin from ruin and the seductions of marron paste and
maple chocolates.

Now, with an uncomfortable sense of impending disaster, she would
hastily consume one or the other; again, supported by a beginning
self-imposed inflexibility, she would turn steadily away from
temptation. In the end the latter triumphed; and her normal
appetite, always moderate, was unimpaired.

This spirit of resolution, it sometimes happened, was a cause of
humorous dismay to her mother. "I declare, Linda," she would observe
with an air of helplessness, "you make me feel like the giddy one
and as if you were mama. It's the way you look, so disapproving. I
have to remind myself you're only--just how old are you? I keep
forgetting." Linda would inform her exactly and the other sigh: