Indeed it was a funny
thing that father should come home early from work and make faces at
mother from the road. Mother, too, was willing to join in the fun,
for she knelt down among the wet flowers, and as her head drooped
lower and lower it looked, for one ecstatic moment, as though she
were going to turn head over heels. But she lay quite still on the
ground, and father came half-way through the gate, and then turned
and ran off down the hill towards the station. Jack stood in the
window, clapping his hands and laughing; it was a strange game, but
not much harder to understand than most of the amusements of the
grown-up people.
And then as nothing happened, as mother did not move and father did
not come back, Jack grew frightened. The garden was queer and the
room was full of darkness, so he beat on the window to change the
game. Then, since mother did not shake her head, he ran out into the
garden, smiling carefully in case he was being silly. First he went
to the gate, but father was quite small far down the road, so he
turned back and pulled the sleeve of his mother's dress, to wake her.
After a dreadful while mother got up off the ground with her skirt
all covered with wet earth. Jack tried to brush it off with his hands
and made a mess of it, but she did not seem to notice, looking across
the garden with such a desolate face, that when he saw it he burst
into tears. For once mother let him cry himself out without seeking
to comfort him; when he sniffed dolefully, his nostrils were full of
the scent of crushed marigolds.
Pages:
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81