Читать книгу Susan Spray онлайн

33 страница из 108

"Stop! Oh stop! You're killing me, surelye!"

"Then say you're sorry for the wicked words you've spoken."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Say you hate your sins."

"I hate my sins."

Susan was swelling with victory.

"Say you won't never go in a circus, but—but ull live hungry and wear dirty clothes, and—and have broken house, and—and a husband and a dunnamany babbies."

"I won't never go in a—oh, Susan, I can't—lemme go—I've disremembered the rest—but I say it, Suke, I say it."

Susan let her up. They faced each other uncertainly for a moment, then both burst into tears. For they saw that they were nearly naked, their faces and bodies plastered with blood and dirt. They could go neither to school nor to work as they were then, but must go home instead, to face a sick, exasperated mother with a need for scrubbing and new clothes. Sinner and saint alike would feel the weight of her arm, and their religious differences at once were lost in an alliance of fear and woe.

§ 9

Early in May a little sister was born, and her parents gave her a grand name—Selina. Why they called her so would be hard to say, unless they hoped to find in this lady's name, this Manor-house name, a change from their own excessive humbleness. They took her to Copthorne Church to be christened and to have her grand name entered in the parish register; for the sects all went to Church to be christened and to be married and to be buried, regarding these events indeed as social and human rather than as religious in character.