Leaving Cold Sassy (9780547527291) Read Online Free PDF

candy dipped in mayonnaise.”
    She half-laughed, traced her right index finger down the screen. “I just wish I knew where I stand with him. He writes me love letters and recites love sonnets, and he wants me to meet his family, and last time he was in Mitchellville, just before he left he said, ‘If I asked you to marry me, would you?’ He said it like teasing. There’s only one answer to a sideways question like that. I said, ‘Well, I might.’ That made him mad, Mr. Tweedy! Heavens, did he expect me to say ‘Oh, goody!’ or beg him ‘Please, ask me’? Now his mother has invited me to a family dinner party, and I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Am I being auditioned for a place in the family, or am I just invited because Hugh wants me there? I don’t know how I’m supposed to act.”
    â€œYou could practice on my folks,” I offered. “I’ll take you over home for supper tonight.”
    She laughed. A nervous little laugh. “I guess I just never have liked meeting people I don’t know.”
    â€œYou sound like my Grandpa Blakeslee. He used to say he didn’t like to go anywhere he hadn’t been. You really want to marry this feller, don’t you?” A stupid question, but she answered it.
    â€œI think I do. I feel so proud when I’m with him, Mr. Tweedy. Before him, I never even met anybody who went to Harvard. He remembers every name and date in history. He can quote whole acts of Shakespeare. And he...he actually enjoys me! When I said that to my Sister Maggie—that he seems to enjoy me—she said, ‘Why wouldn’t he? He does all the talking.’”
    â€œHe sounds like a friend of mine,” I said. “Pink Predmore. Old Pink went to Harvard. Went there a nice feller, came out a snob with a silly accent.”
    Her reply was defensive. “Hugh isn’t like that. He’s...” She cut off the subject. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. And it’s inconsiderate of me to keep you standing there talking through a screen door.”
    â€œI like talkin’ through screen doors. But I expect you need to wash off, Miss Klein, and I got to go by home and see my sister. She’s leavin’ tomorrow for college.” I had turned and was headed down the steps when I remembered something. “You want to hear Sampson’s secret?”
    â€œWhy, Mr. Tweedy! You wouldn’t tell a child’s secret!”
    â€œHe said to. Said tell you he was aimin’ at Loma with that watermelon. You met Loma, Miz Williams. She’s his half-sister and my aunt, and neither one of us is crazy about her. He felt bad bout hittin’ you, but I think he felt worse bout missin’ her. You sure did shut Aunt Loma up, Miss Klein.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAbout those German ancestors, how they came over in the seventeen-hundreds.”
    â€œWould she be impressed if I told her one of them got a land grant from the King of England?”
    â€œYeah, that would impress Loma.”
    She laughed. “But then I’d have to un-impress her by admitting he couldn’t write, and that he lost his land in a wrestling match.”
    â€œI think even Loma would rather have a German wrastler in the family than somebody like our Cudn Hortense, the wife of a Blakeslee cousin. She’s traced her ancestry back to British royalty. Claims her parlor furniture came from Lord Baltimore, and she’s got ribbons tied across the chair arms so nobody can sit in them. Cudn Hortense looks down on anybody whose name isn’t English or French.”
    Miss Klein sighed. “There are a mighty lot of folks like her, Mr. Tweedy. With a four-year-college degree I thought it would be easy to get a teaching job, but three towns turned me down. One school superintendent claimed the places were all filled, but a friend of mine who teaches there said they still had