Growing Pains Read Online Free Page A

sunshine and we sat down under a mock-orange bush, white with blossom and deliciously sweet.
    I made a daisy chain and Mother sewed. All round the opening crowded spiraea bushes loaded with droops of creamy blossom having a hot, fluffy smell. In these bees droned and butterflies fluttered, but our mock-orange bush was whiter and smelled stronger and sweeter. We talked very little as we sat there.
    Mother was always a quiet woman—a little shy of her own children. I am glad she was not chatty, glad she did not perpetually “dear” us as so many English mothers that we knew did with their children. If she had been noisier or quieter, more demonstrative or less loving, she would not have been just right. She was a small, grey-eyed, dark-haired woman, had pink cheeks and struggled breathing. I do not remember to have ever heard her laugh out loud, yet she was always happy and contented. I was surprised once to hear her tell the Bishop, “My heart is always singing.” How did hearts sing? I had never heard Mother’s, I had just heard her difficult, gasping little breaths. Mother’s moving was slow and weak, yet I always think of her as having Jenny-Wren-bird’s quickness. I felt instinctively that was her nature. I became aware of this along with many other things about my mother, things that unfolded to me in my own development.
    OUR PICNIC THAT DAY was perfect. I was for once Mother’s oldest, youngest, her companion-child. While her small, neat hands hurried the little stitches down the long, white seams of her sewing, andmy daisy chains grew and grew, while the flowers of the bushes smelled and smelled and sunshine and silence were spread all round, it almost seemed rude to crunch the sweet biscuit which was our picnic—ordinary munching of biscuits did not seem right for such a splendid time.
    When I had three daisy chains round my neck, when all Mother’s seams were stitched, and when the glint of sunshine had gone quiet, then we went again through our gate, locked the world out, and went back to the others.
    It was only a short while after our picnic that Mother died. Her death broke Father; we saw then how he had loved her, how alone he was without her—none of us could make up to him for her loss. He retired from business. His office desk and chair were brought home and put into the room below Mother’s bedroom. Here Father sat, staring over his garden. His stare was as empty as a pulpit without a preacher and with no congregation in front of it. We saw him there when we came from school and went stupidly wandering over the house from room to room instead of rushing straight up to Mother’s bedroom. By and by, when we couldn’t bear it any longer, we’d creep up the stairs, turn the door handle, go into emptiness, get caught there and scolded for having red eyes and no bravery.
    I was often troublesome in those miserable days after Mother died. I provoked my big sister and, when her patience was at an end, she would say, trying to shame me, “Poor Mother worried about leaving you. She was happy about her other children, knowing she could trust them to behave—good reasonable children—you are different!”
    This cut me to the quick. For years I had spells of crying about it. Then by and by I had a sweetheart. He wanted me to love himand I couldn’t, but one day I almost did—he found me crying and coaxed.
    “Tell me.”
    I told him what my big sister had said. He came close and whispered in my ear, “Don’t cry, little girl. If you were the naughtiest, you can bet your mother loved you a tiny bit the best—that’s the way mothers are.”

DRAWING AND INSUBORDINATION
    I WANTED TO DRAW a dog. I sat beside Carlow’s kennel and stared at him for a long time. Then I took a charred stick from the grate, split open a large brown-paper sack and drew a dog on the sack.
    My married sister who had taken drawing lessons looked at my dog and said, “Not bad.” Father spread the drawing on top of his