Presently she stooped over and
pinched her legs.
"My legs," she said, "same ones. And my cheeks and my hair"--the
latter was pulled with vigor--"and my feet and my hands--all me, and
in a taxi-cab going Christmas shopping and maybe to a marriage, and I
didn't know he was living last week! Father says I mustn't speak to
people I don't know, but how can you know them if you don't speak? I
was born lucky, and I'm so glad I'm living that if I was a rooster I'd
crow. Oh, Mr. Van, are you ready?"
The next few hours to Carmencita were the coming true of dreams that
had long been denied, and from one thrill to another she passed in a
delicious ecstasy which made pinching of some part of her body
continually necessary. While Van Landing dressed she waited in his
library, wandering in wide-eyed awe and on tiptoe from one part of the
room to the other, touching here and there with the tips of her
fingers a book or picture or piece of furniture, and presently in
front of a footstool she knelt down and closed her eyes.
Quickly, however, she opened them and, with head on the side, looked
around and listened.
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