“Una was not a beautiful girl like Mollie,” he said. “But she had the loveliest hands and feet. Her ankles were as slender as grass and she moved like grass. Her fingers were long and the nails narrow and shaped like almonds. And Una had lovely skin too, translucent, even glowing.

“She didn’t laugh and play like the rest of us. There was something set apart about her. She seemed always to be listening. When she was reading, her face would be like the face of one listening to music. And when we asked her any question, why, she gave the answer, if she knew it – not pointed up and full of color and ‘maybes’ and ‘it-might-bes’ the way the rest of us would. We were always full of bull. There was some pure simple thing in Una,” George said. 

“And then they brought her home. Her nails were broken to the quick and her fingers cracked and all worn out. And her poor, dear feet -“ George could not go on for a while, and then he said with the fierceness off a man trying to control himself, “Her feet were broken and gravel-cut and briar-cut. Her dear feet had not worn shoes for a long time. And her skin was rough as rawhide.”

pg. 274, East of Eden