"Sweet-beautiful," came so absurdly from under his swiftly graying
mustache, but often, when sure he was quite alone, he would say it over
and over again.
"Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth."
* * * * *
Of course the years puttied in and healed and softened, until for Henry
almost a Turner haze hung between him and some of the stark facts of
Emma Jett's death, turping out horror, which is always the first to fade
from memory, and leaving a dear sepia outline of the woman who had been
his.
At seventeen, Ann Elizabeth was the sun, the sky, the west wind, and the
shimmer of spring--all gone into the making of her a rosebud off the
stock of his being.
His way of putting it was, "You're my all, Annie, closer to me than I am
to myself."
She hated the voweling of her name, and because she was so nimble with
youth could dance away from these moods of his rather than plumb them.
"I won't be 'Annie.' Please, daddy, I'm your Ann Elizabeth.
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