Читать книгу First the Blade. A Comedy of Growth онлайн

20 страница из 83

That is how Laura went to live at Brackenhurst with Gran’papa Valentine.

She got her letters, three of them, but no more, though that was only because there was a new postman! But though the twins followed her in a little while in white overalls and black sashes, and the weeks went by, and Laura grew daily more excited and impatient, her mother never came to fetch her home.

ssss1

If they had only told her that her mother was dead!

Death, Laura understood. There had been Ben, the beloved mongrel who was poisoned, and Grandmamma, and birds, and once a kitten. Her mother had explained it all to her at the time. Remembering, she would still have had, in the shock, her mother to lean upon. And, especially to a child, death’s finality is its own anodyne. But nobody, with that anxious English substitution of euphemism for tact, ever used the bald word ‘death.’ Mother, she was told, was alive and well and happy. She was living in heaven with Jesus and Our Father. She knew everything that Laura did, and one day, if Laura were good, she would see her again.