Читать книгу All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography онлайн

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It was not to be endured, and so one November day just after my third birthday I announced I was going to leave. “Going back to Grandma.” “Very well,” my mother said. I knew the way the men went when they walked away from the shop, and I followed it, but not far. Across the valley in which we lived ran an embankment. To my young eyes it was as high as a mountain, and the nearer I came the higher it looked, the higher and blacker. And then suddenly as I came to its foot I realized that I had never been on the other side, that I did not know the way to Grandma’s. I knew I was beaten, and sat down to think it over. Never in all these years since have I faced defeat, known that I must retreat, that I have not been again that little figure with the black mountain in front of it, a little figure looking longingly at a shanty dim in the growing night but showing a light in the window.

Finally I turned slowly back to the house and sat down on the steps. It seemed a long time before the door opened and my mother in a surprised voice said: