Mary Olivier: A Life | Page 4

softly in the corner of the sash. It was cold, and melted on your tongue
with a taste of window-pane.
In the garden Mark and Dank and Roddy were making the snow man.
Mamma stood at the nursery window with her back to the room. She
called to Mary to come and look at the snow man.
Mary was tired of the snow man. She was making a tower with Roddy's
bricks while Roddy wasn't there. She had to build it quick before he
could come back and take his bricks away, and the quicker you built it
the sooner it fell down. Mamma was not to look until it was finished.
"Look--look, Mamma! M-m-mary's m-m-made a tar. And it's not falled
down!"
The tower reached above Jenny's knee.
"Come and look, Mamma--" But Mamma wouldn't even turn her head.
"I'm looking at the snow man," she said.
Something swelled up, hot and tight, in Mary's body and in her face.
She had a big bursting face and a big bursting body. She struck the
tower, and it fell down. Her violence made her feel light and small
again and happy.
"Where's the tower, Mary?" said Mamma.
"There isn't any tar. I've knocked it down. It was a nashty tar."
III.
Aunt Charlotte--
Aunt Charlotte had sent the Isle of Skye terrier to Dank.
There was a picture of Aunt Charlotte in Mamma's Album. She stood

on a strip of carpet, supported by the hoops of her crinoline; her black
lace shawl made a pattern on the light gown. She wore a little hat with
a white sweeping feather, and under the hat two long black curls hung
down straight on each shoulder.
The other people in the Album were sulky, and wouldn't look at you.
The gentlemen made cross faces at somebody who wasn't there; the
ladies hung their heads and looked down at their crinolines. Aunt
Charlotte hung her head too, but her eyes, tilted up straight under her
forehead, pointed at you. And between her stiff black curls she was
smiling--smiling. When Mamma came to Aunt Charlotte's picture she
tried to turn over the page of the Album quick.
Aunt Charlotte sent things. She sent the fat valentine with the lace
paper border and black letters printed on sweet-smelling white satin
that Papa threw into the fire, and the white china doll with black hair
and blue eyes and no clothes on that Jenny hid in the nursery cupboard.
The Skye terrier brought a message tied under his chin: "Tib. For my
dear little nephew Dan with Aunt Charlotte's fond love." He had
high-peaked, tufted ears and a blackish grey coat that trailed on the
floor like a shawl that was too big for him. When you tried to stroke
him the shawl swept and trailed away under the table. You saw nothing
but shawl and ears until Papa began to tease Tib. Papa snapped his
finger and thumb at him, and Tib showed little angry eyes and white
teeth set in a black snarl.
Mamma said, "Please don't do that again, Emilius."
And Papa did it again.
IV.
"What are you looking at, Master Daniel?" said Jenny.
"Nothing."
"Then what are you looking like that for? You didn't ought to."

Papa had sent Mark and Dank to the nursery in disgrace. Mark leaned
over the back of Jenny's chair and rocked her. His face was red but
tight; and as he rocked he smiled because of his punishment.
Dank lay on the floor on his stomach, his shoulders hunched, raised on
his elbows, his chin supported by his clenched fists. He was a dark and
white boy with dusty eyelashes and rough, doggy hair. He had
puckered up his mouth and made it small; under the scowl of his
twisted eyebrows he was looking at nothing.
"It's no worse for you than it is for Master Mark," said Jenny.
"Isn't it? Tib was my dog. If he hadn't been my dog Papa wouldn't have
teased him, and Mamma wouldn't have sent him back to Aunt Charlotte,
and Aunt Charlotte wouldn't have let him be run over."
"Yes. But what did you say to your Papa?"
"I said I wish Tib had bitten him. So I do. And Mark said it would have
served him jolly well right."
"So it would," said Mark.
Roddy had turned his back on them. Nobody was taking any notice of
him; so he sang aloud to himself the song he was forbidden to sing:
"John Brown's body lies a-rotting in his grave, John Brown's body lies
a-rotting in his grave--"
The song seemed to burst out of Roddy's beautiful white face; his pink
lips twirled and tilted; his golden curls bobbed and nodded to the tune.
"John Brown's body lies a-rotting in his